China blasts US, South Korea missile defence deployment

South Korea and the US have agreed to deploy the Thaad anti-ballistic missile system on the Korean peninsula, a move that drew immediate condemnation from China.

South Korea's military said Friday the US will deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence system in the country by the end of 2017 at the latest. The decision was made in response to a growing ballistic missile threat from North Korea, a South Korean defence ministry official said in a televised briefing.

The anti-missile system provides yet another friction point as the US seeks to maintain its strategic dominance in the region amid China's rise, and Beijing pushes back against what it sees as a Washington-led containment effort.

The announcement comes just days before an expected international court ruling on maritime rights in the South China Sea, a vital trade route where the two sides have been jockeying for control.

China's foreign ministry immediately responded, saying it strongly opposed the deployment, and urged Seoul and Washington to reconsider the move.

"The deployment doesn't help achieve the objective of denuclearisation in the peninsula, doesn't benefit maintaining peace and stability in the peninsula," China's foreign ministry said in a statement, adding, "It's going toward the opposite direction of solving the problem via dialogue and negotiation."

Russia's foreign ministry also criticised the decision, saying it sees dangerous consequences from the deployment.

The US Defence Department said in a statement Friday that the Thaad system will be focused solely on North Korean nuclear and missile threats and would not be directed toward any third party nations.

Meanwhile, Japanese government spokesman Koichi Hagiuda told reporters in Tokyo that the advance in defence co-operation between the US and South Korea would contribute to regional stability. Japan, South Korea and the US last month held their first joint military exercises aimed at tracking North Korean missiles.

South Korea and Washington have been in talks about deploying the anti-missile defence system since Kim Jong Un's regime conducted a nuclear test in January and then followed it up with several ballistic missile tests in violation of a United Nation's resolution banning them.

Deploying the system is likely to cool relations between South Korea and China, said Kim Dong-yup, an analyst at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul.

"There will be economic retaliatory acts by the Chinese government. It will cause inconvenience in terms of trade, making it difficult, for example, for South Korea products difficult to pass inspections," he said.

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In intraday trading, South Korean cosmetic stocks fell sharply as investors appeared to be worried about the possibility of China's spending on Korean products dropping. LG Household & Health Care Ltd. dropped as much as 7.5 per cent while Amorepacific Corp. fell as much as 5.8 per cent.

The decision to deploy the system also comes as North Korea called recent financial sanctions imposed against its leader, Kim Jong Un, a declaration of war.

The US Treasury Department for the first time on Thursday imposed sanctions on Kim, targeting him and other top officials for widespread human-rights abuses. The sanctions make it harder for banks or other financial institutions worldwide to hold or move assets owned by those on the list.