(CNN) — There’s only one reason the U.S. will deploy the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea, Defense Secretary James Mattis said Thursday as he arrived in the country on his first overseas trip as Pentagon chief.
“THAAD is for defense of our allies’ people, of our troops who are committed to their defense and were it not for the provocative behavior of North Korea we would have no need for THAAD out here,” Mattis said, referring to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system.
After arriving at the Osan Air Base outside Seoul he said “there is no other nation that needs to be concerned about THAAD other than North Korea.”
The planned deployment of THAAD in South Korea has drawn criticism from China, which sees it as part of a broader U.S. strategy to extend its military alliance network from Japan all the way down to the South China Sea.
But Mattis said that is not the case.
“There’s only one reason we even have this under discussion right now and that is North Korea’s activities,” he said.
Mattis’ arrival in South Korea comes at a time of relative quiet from Kim Jong Un’s regime in Pyongyang, which hasn’t tested a ballistic missile since October 20 after firing off projectiles at a record rate earlier in 2016.
The question North Korea watchers are asking: How long will Kim keep his missile program grounded?
Some analysts expect testing to resume soon.
“They have a wonderful tradition of greeting every new U.S. President with a bit of fireworks, sometimes a nuclear test, sometimes ICBM launch and they’re not going to break this tradition,” Korean studies professor Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul told CNN.
But Bruce Bennett of the Rand Corporation think tank said Kim’s testing hiatus is focused not on Washington, but on Seoul and the impeachment in December of President Park Geun-hye in a corruption scandal.
Her fate is now before South Korea’s Constitutional Court. A decision against her could trigger elections earlier than the mandated December 20 deadline.
“I believe that North Korea’s number one objective between now and the ROK presidential election is to ensure that the new South Korean President will be a progressive, and certainly not a conservative,” Bennett said, using the acronym for the Republic of Korea.
“But any provocations that it commits would give support to conservative candidates,” said the senior defense analyst.
John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, concurs with Bennett to a point, saying Kim is keeping relatively quiet because of the presidential uncertainty in Seoul but also to see what course U.S. President Donald Trump will take on relations with Pyongyang.
After Kim said in a televised New Year’s Day speech that his military is on the brink of testing its first intercontinental ballistic missile – a rocket that can be equipped with nuclear weapons and is powerful enough to reach any part of the U.S. – Trump vowed in a tweet, “It won’t happen.”
The then-President-elect didn’t say how he’d block Kim’s missile ambitions.
But on the campaign trail last year, Trump said he might be willing to meet the North Korean leader for discussions over a hamburger.
Mattis said Thursday he’s in South Korea to listen to its leaders before deciding on exactly what strategy the Trump administration will adopt concerning Pyongyang.
“I need to get some data from them, I need to get their appreciation of the situation before I start making statements about where I stand,” Mattis said.
“It’s hard to anticipate what they do,” he said of the North, but he was cautious not to inflame the situation.
“We maintained what passes for peace so far to a degree,” he said.
CNN’s Paula Hancocks, Katie Hunt, and Emiko Jozuka contributed to this report.
This story was first published on CNN.com, “US Defense Secretary Mattis: Only North Korea need fear missile defense.”
