Cheonan Survivors: Explosion Came from Outside

For the first time, the reporters have been allowed to interview survivors of the Cheonan incident. The spontaneity of the surviving sailors’ reactions was diminished by the appearance that they were instructed not to speculate on North Korean involvement, but all seem to agree that the blast came from outside the ship:

“I heard a loud boom, and felt my body being instantly lifted up in the air,” Senior Chief Petty Officer Oh Seong-tak told a news conference. “The noise was so loud that my ears hurt.” Oh, who was in his bunk on the vessel’s lowest level at the time of the blast, said he grabbed at everything around him to feel his way out, and then realized the door was at his feet. “The vessel tilted at a 90-degree angle immediately after the explosion,” he said.

Sailors said the blast felt like it came from outside the ship, but did not comment on speculation of possible North Korean involvement. The Cheonan sank in the Yellow Sea near the contested western sea border — a scene of three bloody inter-Korean naval battles since 1999.

The sailors said there were no unusual signs before the explosion. They said there was no smell of gunpowder after the blast, only oil. [AP, Sangwon Yoon]

A separate story filed by the same reporter adds this quote:

Senior Chief Petty Officer Kim Soo-gil said he heard a booming noise, followed by the sound of water sloshing. He followed the trail of moonlight reflecting on the water flooding into the boat to reach the boat’s deck from his bunk inside.

“There’s a tearing noise if a ship hits a rock, and it would have shaken if it was caught in sand,” he told a news conference. “It seemed to have been a shock from the outside rather than those two reasons.” [AP, Sangwon Yoon]

Most of the survivors appear to have been in the bow of the ship at the time of the explosion, which immediately tilted that portion of the ship at a 90-degree angle and cut off its power supply. More here, here, and here.

I could not help but feel terrible for the grieving captain of the Cheonan, who still seems unable to accept the loss of his men.

Capt. Choi Won-il, who mostly sat with his eyes closed and lips pursed as his men spoke, said he hopes the missing are still alive and is waiting for the day they can return to duty. “Please understand the situation as it is,” Choi said, wiping away tears with his sleeve. “My men, who I feel are by my side, are deep in my heart.” [AP, Sangwon Yoon]

The question of whether the explosion came from inside or outside the ship should be easy to answer by examining the two halves of the ship’s hull. There is now a debate within the Navy as to whether the public and the news media should be allowed access to the hull after it’s raised. The answer, clearly, is yes, but with some limits. First, the Navy should have the chance to remove or cover any equipment that might be secret. Second, access should initially be limited to investigators, small groups of journalists, and family members of the missing — obviously not at the same time. After an appropriate period of time, the public should also have access to the hull, largely because the bungling of the post-incident public relations has been so bad that the public access will be necessary to refute conspiracy theorists who haven’t even bothered to examine the evidence.

That’s especially so when North Korea — still very much a suspect in the incident — holds so much sway over the low characters of South Korea’s internet culture. For North Korea, the perfect outcome is for the South Korean government to believe that it sank the Cheonan while sowing so much doubt and disunity about its involvement that a united and coherent South Korean policy response — including the “stern measures” darkly hinted at by President Lee — becomes impossible.

Further complicating this question are the concerns of the Chief of the National Intelligence Service that leaks of classified information about South Korea’s military capabilities during the investigation will further inhibit the U.S. military’s ability to trust South Korea with its secrets.

President Lee, clearly feeling the preemptive sagging of public confidence in whatever the investigation finds, is now asking for investigative support from both the United States and the United Nations. (If Lee already knows that the North Koreans did this, it’s also a smart way to build a coalition of international support.) Someone remind me whether anyone at the U.N. even remembers how to find Korea on a map; or so it has always seemed whenever Ban Ki Moon sensed any risk of controversy with North Korea. Inevitably, I suppose, the U.S. government found itself in no position to refuse Lee’s request. Not only will they help figure out what sank the Cheonan, they’re already showing how not to answer questions until you know what the facts are:

“I’m confident that we will find out” the cause, Gen. Walter Sharp, chief of the 28,500 American troops in South Korea, said at a meeting with U.S. businesses in South Korea, where he gave a speech Tuesday and then took questions. “We want to get to the right answer, the correct answer and we don’t want to rush to that conclusion.”

Sharp refused to speculate on the cause of the blast. “I’m not gonna speculate on this because again, the experts haven’t started looking at it,” he said. The U.S. and South Korea “watch North Korea very closely every single day of the year and we continue to do that right now,” he said. “And again, as this has been said, we see no unusual activity at this time.” [AP]

See how easy that was, Minister Kim?

For what it’s worth, Open News reports that in Pyongyang, it’s widely rumored that Kim Jong Il and (significantly) Kim Jong Eun ordered the attack that sank the Cheonan to avenge North Korea’s recent beatings at the hands of the South Korean navy and to test a new super-secret cloak of invisibility for North Korean submarines. Obviously, those rumors are hardly conclusive evidence of anything, though they’re worth mentioning.

Coincidentally, the Chosun Ilbo has more on the type of stealthy miniature submarine that could have carried a torpedo big enough to do this.