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As North Korea Emerges as a Prime Suspect, Discussion Turns to How South Korea Should Respond

As my sense grows that the Cheonan Incident could be one of the most consequential events on the Korean Peninsula since the provocations of 1968, it has become the event that eats most of my human bandwidth, and I apologize if I’ve been delinquent in blogging other stories. Here are some updates for today:

The Investigation

The man heading South Korea’s investigation into the cause of the blast that sank the Cheonan answers one of my first questions about the damage to the ship:

Yoon said the twisting of metal from the salvaged stern that was raised on Thursday indicated the blast had come from outside but the team will wait until the rest of the ship was raised and other evidence gathered before reaching a final conclusion.

“The Cheonan was also halved in the middle. Therefore, it is highly likely that a torpedo fired from a submarine or mine destroyed the ship,” military expert and former submarine captain Jung Sung wrote in the JoongAng Ilbo daily. [Reuters, Jon Herskovitz]

Herskovitz also reports that “[l]ocal media is increasingly pinning the blame on North Korea, in the absence of any other likely reasons for the explosion.” Yes, it sounds like the South Korea’s long national daydream is over at last.

Investigators are already combing the wreck and the sea floor for forensic evidence of a mine or torpedo attack:

The military has collected dozens of metal fragments from the breached section of the stern and inside the hull. It is analyzing them with a variety of high-tech devices, including three-dimensional cameras, liquid chromatography and gas chromatography systems, and a mass spectrometer.

The investigators are focusing on finding gunpowder residue on the cross section where the breach occurred following the explosion, which experts say appears to have been caused by a torpedo attack, possibly from North Korea.

The military said that it has yet to find any fragments and debris during its underwater search operations, which appear to have come from a torpedo or a sea mine. [Korea Herald]

More on the investigation:

Seoul has launched an international investigation involving eight Americans, three Australians and four Swedes to ensure the eventual findings cannot be disputed.

Navy officials said investigators were at the naval base in Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometres (43 miles) south of Seoul, looking into the stern which had been cleared of ammunition and was illuminated inside.

They were also scrutinising some 170 pieces of the debris for clues to the cause of the disaster. [AFP]

By the way, I re-edited this post into this commentary at The New Ledger. Thanks to several of the commenters there for their thoughtful comments and persuasive analysis which led me to re-think my views and backed me away from favoring a particular modus operandi just yet.

The Consequences

Lee’s Foreign Minister is now suggesting that his government may refer this incident to the U.N. Security Council:

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan yesterday suggested that Seoul would consider referring the Cheonan case to the United Nations Security Council should the allegation of North Korea’s involvement turn out to be true.

“Though it is a mere scenario (at this point), should it prove that the North is responsible for the incident, we could think first of referring the matter to the U.N. Security Council,” Yu said in a television program.

“Another crucial thing is to reinforce and complement the joint defense posture between Korea and the United States. We will also try to address the matter through close cooperation with our allies with whom we maintain good relations, such as the European Union and Japan. [Korea Herald]

It would be gratifying to see Ban Ki-Moon forced to take a firm position on something, not to mention the sight of China trying to squirm out of this one. The State Department has gone so far as to concede that if North Korea did this, it would affect the six-party talks, but other likely consequences of North Korean guilt would be (or at least ought to be) re-adding it to the list of state sponsors of terrorism and a further tightening of trade and financial sanctions.

Deliberations and Politics

Don Kirk reports that “the sense among many Koreans” is that President Lee will look for a way to avoid confrontation by avoiding any firm conclusion that North Korea sank the Cheonan. I agree, but only to a point. I’m sure this is a headache Lee would rather not have. Up until now, he was doing a great job of staying in the background, letting Kim Jong Il make all the mistakes, and slowly letting the various subsidies to the North die natural deaths. In that context, the Cheonan attack — if it was an attack; this whole discussion is still hypothetical — might be a desperate move to break the financial and diplomatic siege in which Kim now finds himself. It’s also clear that Lee, being the “pragmatic” sort, is well aware that military tensions have much more potential to harm South Korea’s economy than North Korea’s, which is why I don’t think he’ll use the military option.

I don’t go so far as to invest belief in any of the cover-up theories coming from the left or the right, and frankly, if he was, I don’t think he’d have invited so much international participation in the current investigation. It seems more likely to me that Lee already thinks the North Koreans did this and wants to have that added international credibility before he accuses North Korea, cuts off the aid, and then squanders those budget appropriations on extending his canal to Cheju Island.

No doubt mindful that South Korea’s next round of mid-term elections is scheduled for June 2nd, Lee is now forced into a very careful balancing act — trying not to look weak (thereby losing support to the conservative Liberty Forward Party) while trying not to raise tensions too fast and scare voters (thereby losing support to the leftist Democratic Party). Lee’s next step is to address the nation, offer his condolences to the families of the dead, and appeal for unity. He will also meet with the heads of the two main opposition parties to talk about the incident. I wish him much luck with that. I’d be gratified to see evidence that South Korea is governable in a moment of national crisis, especially one that coincides with an election.

6 Responses

  2. I know it might not fly with a South Korea public that might demand a military response, but from a strategic point of view, why not use this as an excuse to shut down all economic activity with the North? No more Kaesong, no more anything. That probably hurts the North a lot more than limited strikes on a few bases, which might simply help Kim shore up his popularity with the masses due to nationalistic outrage. And Kim can’t retaliate against economic measures…except by more military means, which would give South Korea even more political and diplomatic capital.

    No more trade, and refer them for sanctions. Every additional economic blow brings the end a little closer.

  3. It is with deep regret that I must report that this isn’t true:

    Yes, it sounds like the South Korea’s long national daydream is over at last.

    While the mainstream press reports the facts as they are, some clandestine members of the Korean Worker’s Party South Korean netizens still continue to cling to the least probable, physics-defying theories—that the ship just collapsed due to disrepair, or that the ship struck an reef—in a vain effort to absolve the Lodestar of the Great Race of his crimes against humanity.

    See for instance this article from Media Today in which the author borrows from the well-worn playbook of 9/11 “truthers” and moonlanding denalists and engages himself in a bit of JAQing off (Just Asking Questions—“don’t ask me for any hard facts, I’m just the guy asking questions!”). The article is entitled “10 Reasons it’s Hard to Believe There Was an External Explosion.”

    Among his vapid “reasons” are “why were no one’s eardrums burst?” “How come none of the survivors were wet?” Most of his questions are easily answered with “good old fashioned bureaucratic incompetence,” but that would be too boring.

    Another article from News and Views quotes a “Marine Rescue Expert” as saying the ship probably flooded…hmmm…wouldn’t sailors know if the ship started flooding? And of course, how did those decks get violently twisted upwards?

    There are others. Troll the comments of mainstream forums to see the insanity: some claim the American’s did it. Other claim it was a domestic attempt to manipulate the June 2nd elections. Everyone is now an expert on marine affairs. But they all seem to agree on one thing: the Minjok are far too pure and virtuous to commit such a heinous act.

  4. Hankyoreh has gotten into the act as well. They published a Korean-language article entitled “A Several-Hindered Meter-high Water Column Can’t Be Seen? The Constant Question Marks Surrounding the Bubble Jet” They wonder why no water column was sighted and why were scores of dead fish not seen near the scene of the blast. They also point out that the propeller of the ship was bent. They end the article by quoting the guy I mentioned above in News and Views who claimed the damage on the ship wasn’t “tremendous” enough to come from a torpedo, and claims that something “ripped” the ship. It also points out that it has not been confirmed if the North has torpedoes capable of creating a “bubble jet.”

    It seems the Dear Leader’s show of concern for the Minjok last week is going to work on the hearts and minds of the masses. The aforementioned are fair and legitimate questions, to be sure, but the “reef” or “fatigue fracture” hypotheses utterly fail to explain why a modern warship would split in half in the way that it did or why the ship’s decks are violently pushed upwards. For a fatigue fracture to split a ship right in half would require an improbable number of improbable structural failures all occurring at the same time. The ship’s inner structure wouldn’t be pointing up either. Modern ships, regardless of their level of disrepair don’t just split in half. Grounding on a reef is not enough to split a ship in half either and doesn’t explain the damage that is clearly evident in the photos of the ship’s stern. Hitting a reef (there were none in the area to begin with) could certainly sink a ship, but not capsize it and rip it in half with violent force. Water entering the ship through a hole in the side could capsize the boat, but A) this would have taken a while, B) this would have not have broken the ship in half, C) the crew would have detected flooding.

    Clearly, the only hypothesis consistent with the data is that of an external explosion, whatever its cause be.

  5. I’m no forensic specialist, but I wonder if the bent propeller would be caused by the ship settling to the bottom (I don’t recall the position of that part of the ship, so I don’t know if the propeller would end up on the bottom, side, or top).

    And the lack of dead floating fish? If there were dozens of such fish from an explosion, how likely is it they would remain in the vicinity of the sinking in such swift and choppy waters?

  6. Kushibo, you’re probably correct about the dead fish. First of all, it was a while (I can’t recall how much time) before rescuers arrived on the scene. The currents were strong enough that the final resting place of the bow and stern were quite a ways apart. Also, I doubt looking for dead fish was the first thing on the mind of either survivors or the rescuers.

    Regarding the question of why no one’s ear drums were burst, DongA Ilbo tackles that question in an interview with Defense Science Research Center’s underwater acoustic specialist, professor Na Cheong-yeol. Professor Na analyzed the seismic recording from the explosion and determined that it occurred about 35 meters below the keel. 35 meters of water would have deaden the sonic wave. It also explains why the damage doesn’t look exactly like the oft-cited Australian torpedo test.

    According to interviews with the families of the perished sailors, the clocks on board the ship stopped at 9:21, which apparently raised concerns among some of the family members, but this is exactly what we would expect if a catastrophic explosion had occurred. Also, the article quotes a surviving family member as saying that 10 of the bodies appeared to have drowned, but the rest had “blood coming out of their ears, eyes, and noses.” This is also exactly what we would expect to find in the event of an explosion, not fatigue or running aground imaginary reefs (not to mention that neither cause results in seismic waves)

    Finally, a nice article in today’s DongA Ilbo tackles two myths circulating: that the US torpedoed the ship and that a South Korean mine was responsible. In the first case (no doubt spread by brain-dead ethno-nationalists masturbating to the verses of the Eternal President), some believe that only the US has torpedoes capable of producing bubble jets and so therefore the nefarious Americans were behind this plot. The DongA Ilbo points out that these types of torpedoes have been around for quite some time. The ROK got its first shipment from Germany way back in 1992. Even if the North doesn’t have the technology to produce these types of weapons, have they considered that they bought them from China? They also dispel the possibility of a renegade South Korean mine by noting that mines laid in the 1970s near Baeknyeong-do were installed on the North side of the island, while the Cheonan sank on the southwest side. Also, the detonators have been “eliminated,” (old age, I assume) and so therefore can’t explode.

    Finally, as an aside, in an interview with Yahoo’s live show “Yahoo Today,” Democrat Party lawmaker Kim Hyo-shik has come out in favor of the “fatigue fracture” or “hitting a reef” hypothesis. Are these people going to become Korea’s version of the 9/11 “truth” movement?