Korean Missile-Defense Upgrade

Korean Missile-Defense Upgrade - WSJ:
"China’s leaders are again standing by North Korea after its nuclear test by blocking serious United Nations sanctions and refusing to cut off the flow of fuel, food and arms to Pyongyang. 
But this time Beijing may pay a strategic price for shielding its unsavory friends, as South Korea moves closer to deploying the U.S.-built Thaad defense system to protect itself from ballistic-missile attacks.
After publicly avoiding the topic for more than a year, President Park Geun-hye raised it last week in a national address. “Taking the North’s nuclear and missile threats into consideration,” she said, “I will review the issue of deploying Thaad here based on security and national interests. That is the bottom line.”
It’s also good news for anyone within missile range of Kim Jong Un, which now includes the South Koreans, Japanese, and perhaps also Americans in Hawaii, Alaska and the U.S. West Coast.
...As for Beijing, it sees any advance in U.S. and allied military capabilities as an obstacle to its ambition to dominate Asia, and has sought to draw Seoul—which does more trade with China than with the U.S. and Japan combined—into its own camp.
South Korea would “sacrifice its fast-growing relations with China” by integrating into U.S.-led regional missile defenses, the official Xinhua news agency warned last year. China’s defense minister and other senior officials reinforced the message on visits to Seoul, but their hosts publicly told them to back off.
Ms. Park’s move toward deploying Thaad should be met with dispatch by the Obama Administration. 
Integrated allied missile defenses in Asia are a bulwark against North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and China’s growing threat to America’s core alliances in Asia."