THAAD grannies: villagers on the front line of a regional arms race that pits US against China
Documentary, which had its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival, captures elderly farmers at centre of international diplomatic controversy
A powerful US missile system installed in South Korea to defend it from the nuclear-armed North made international headlines this year. But the stars of a film about the project are the grandmothers who found themselves living next to some of the world’s most advanced weapons.
The South Korean documentary Soseongri shows how the deployment transformed a previously sleepy farming district into a domestic and international political battleground.
Most of the protagonists are in their 80s, enabling the documentary-makers to draw parallels between the Korean war and the peninsula’s current tensions as they recount their own nightmarish memories of the 1950-53 conflict.
Seoul last year announced the deployment of the US Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system to guard against growing missile threats from Pyongyang.
But the plan drew fire from both China, which saw THAAD as a threat to its own security, and residents of Seongju, the southeastern county designated to host it. Soseongri is the closest village to the former golf course where THAAD was installed in March.
The deployment sparked months of protests and demonstrators clashed with police as they struggled to prevent US army trucks carrying missile parts entering the village.
