In the Eye of a Geopolitical Storm: South Korea's Lotte Group, China and the U.S. THAAD Missile Defense System (A)

By late 2016 and early 2017, Lotte Group, a South Korean chaebol (large family-controlled business group) had become embroiled not only in the domestic political turmoil surrounding President Park Geun-hye, but also—uncomfortably—in a four-country geopolitical storm. Amid rising tensions with North Korea, the South Korean government had agreed to deploy a U.S.-built anti-missile defense system known as THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense). The THAAD deployment had been strongly advocated for by Washington, Seoul’s treaty ally, and equally vehemently opposed by China—South Korea’s giant neighbor, with which Seoul had developed close economic ties and, in recent years, much improved political relations. In late 2016, the Park government decided that THAAD should initially be deployed on a particular property then in use as a privately owned golf course. The golf course’s owner happened to be Lotte Group. The case highlights the multifaceted, complex decision facing Lotte Group’s leadership: how to respond to the Park government’s national security-based request to transfer the land, while also taking into account China’s outspoken opposition to THAAD—seen in Beijing as impairing China’s own national security. As of 2016, Lotte Group had extensive operations, and even bigger aspirations, in the massive China market. As Lotte Group’s leadership grappled with its imminent decision at the end of 2016 and into 2017, the costs of defying Beijing were becoming more apparent, with the Group’s Chinese supermarkets hit by consumer boycotts and a raft of citations by Chinese authorities for fire code and other infractions.