SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea threatened on Monday an unspecified “physical counteraction” once the United States and South Korea decided upon a site in the South where an advanced American missile defense system will be deployed.
The warning from the North Korean military, carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, was its first reaction since South Korea and the United States announced an agreement on Friday to deploy the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, system in the South.
The allies said the deployment was to better protect South Korea and the United States military in the region from the North’s growing nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. Officials were expected to reveal the site for a Thaad base this year.
On Monday, North Korea said that the rationale to deploy Thaad was “absurd,” adding that all its military weapons, including an intermediate-range ballistic missile it tested last month, were for “self-defense.”
North Korea “will take a physical counteraction to thoroughly control Thaad,” the military said in its statement, which characterized the system’s deployment part of an American plan for “world domination.” In addition, the military vowed to act against the system “from the moment its location and place have been confirmed in South Korea.”
The statement did not elaborate. But it also said that the North had long placed South Korea and American military bases in the region under the range of its missiles and rockets.
American and South Korean defense officials viewed the test of the North’s Musudan missile last month as the latest proof that the country was developing a capability to strike American military bases in the Pacific, including those on Guam, a major launching pad for American reinforcements should a conflict break out on the Korean Peninsula or elsewhere in the region.
On Monday, North Korea said the Thaad deployment was part of the United States’ plan to build “an Asian version of NATO” to check China and Russia and secure military hegemony in the region. It also said that the deployment would place South Korea deeper under the Americans’ “military dominion.”
South Korea and the United States insisted that Thaad was solely to protect their forces from North Korea. But China and Russia have opposed its deployment, seeing it as a threat to their own security.
Analysts said that the deployment would make China value North Korea’s role in countering United States influence in the region and become less cooperative in enforcing United Nations sanctions against its neighbor.
North Korea test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Saturday, although the South characterized it as a failure. The country also conducted its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 and followed up a month later with the launch of a long-range rocket, widely considered as part of its program to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile.