With thaw toward S. Korea, Beijing shelves patriot games – for now

In early March, when American officials announced that they had begun to install a missile-defense system in South Korea that China said could be used to spy on its territory, the Lotte Mart in Beijing’s Wangjing district became an easy target for Chinese nationalists looking to vent their anger.

Urged on by editorials in the state-run new media, banner-waving protesters soon filled the sidewalk in front of the supermarket. They heckled would-be customers to boycott the store because it was owned by Lotte, a South Korean conglomerate that had agreed to provide land for the antimissile system known as THAAD (Terminal High Altitude