When watching the news coverage by the South Korean press, I feel sad for they seem to isolate the residents of Seongju as "non-citizens," like the families of the Sewol victims and the residents living near the site of a new transmission tower in Miryang. After the South Korean and U.S. governments decided to place the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in Korea, discussions seem to be limited to the safety of the local residents. The attempts to distort the issue by mentioning the intervention of "outside forces" and "pro-North followers" by those in power and the conservative press are now horribly boring. The issue of the residents' safety is important in itself, and should be raised persistently. But the party mentioning "national security" claiming that the decision was made for the lives and safety of tens of millions of citizens cannot win this argument by simply dismissing it as a problem of NIMBY.

A U.S politician has stepped up claiming that he would feed his children melons grown in Seongju. The remarks of Congressman Trent Franks were relayed by a ruling party lawmaker who was once a researcher at the Korean Institute for Defense Analyses. Afterwards, Franks called the South Korean correspondents and held a press conference, in the midst of the Republican Party's national convention. He said he was willing to place the THAAD missiles in his backyard in Arizona if the military would allow it. But he knows better than anyone else that the military would never make such a decision.

We asked him how effective the THAAD missiles were in defending South Korea and how capable it was in distinguishing a re-entering warhead from a decoy warhead. Franks mentioned the simulation results of 2005 when they succeeded all eleven times and repeated the same words that the THAAD missiles had a 99% probability of intercepting enemy attacks. At the same time, he admitted that the THAAD system still lacked the ability to distinguish decoys from warheads. But he added that technological developments would solve that problem. He also said that placing the THAAD system was better than having nothing at all.

What do the U.S. scientists familiar with missile defense mechanics think? By scientists, I am referring to the people who stand at a certain distance away from the U.S. military industrial complex and thus can give a more objective opinion on this matter. Ted Postol, a chair professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists and George Louis, a researcher at Cornell University argue that while it is easy for the enemy to disturb the system with decoy warheads, it is difficult for the allies to prevent such a problem. In other words, while it is easy to design a decoy warhead that looks exactly the same as an entering warhead on the infrared radar, there is basically no way to distinguish the two. Even if the THAAD system is placed in Seongju, it will be difficult to intercept Rodong and Scud missiles that the North Korean military launches.

This was also the conclusion of a 1981 thesis written by the U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, a physics major, when he was a researcher. Professor Postol pointed out that it was "immoral" as a scientist for Carter to work so hard to promote THAAD when there have been no fundamental technological advances to overturn his conclusion in the past thirty-five years.

President Barack Obama has more knowledge than any previous president on the issue of nuclear and missile proliferation prevention. He has many aides, who are also scientists, with similar views to Postol. Then why are they not pulling the brakes on the placement of the THAAD missiles? One source familiar with the discussions in the Obama administration said, "The placement of THAAD was not promoted by Obama." According to this source, U.S. allies, South Korea and Japan begged the U.S. to place THAAD in their countries because of North Korean missile threats, and the U.S. had no choice but to accept since the Pentagon, the arms manufacturers and the Republican Party took advantage of this opportunity.

If that is the case, then even if South Korea overturns its decision to place the THAAD missiles, the U.S. government does not have much reason to be disappointed. We need to listen to the voices of U.S. scientists, who argue that the THAAD missiles do not contribute to the defense of South Korea in the technical aspect. We need to reconsider why we should risk becoming the forefront of tensions in Northeast Asia by placing a weapon, whose effectiveness cannot be guaranteed by even missile defense fanatics.