Government Bungling Feeds Cheonan Conspiracy Theories and Frustrates National Unity (Updated)

More than a week after the mysterious sinking of the corvette Cheonan, the only certainties for the families of the missing are loss, tragedy, and confusion. In the last several days, the body of just one missing sailor was found. Divers have searched much of the sunken stern section of the ship, but did not find any bodies there. In addition to the diver who was lost trying to save the crew, nine more crew members of a fishing boat were lost after a Cambodian freighter struck and sank her. The boat was assisting in the recovery operation. President Obama has also sent his condolences.

The South Korean government has also begun to search the sea floor for clues about what sank the Cheonan, using minesweepers, divers, and no less than 37 salvage vessels.

As of today, however, we still don’t know why the Cheonan sank, and it’s starting to seem that we may never know for sure. Even after the ship is raised, even if the scientific evidence is ultimately conclusive, the swirl of conspiracy theories suggests that many Koreans will discard it and choose from the growing variety of theories to fit every predisposition. According to this conspiracy theory, for example, the Navy is covering up evidence that the Cheonan sank after striking a rock. The great weight of the evidence that’s been reported so far suggests that an external explosion blew the Cheonan in half, but never mind: there couldn’t have been an explosion, or so holds the theory, because no one saw a fireball and none of the injured were burned. But this is nonsense even to the untrained. Underwater explosions break the keels of ships by the force of pressure. They don’t produce fireballs because there is no combustible oxygen underwater. What’s next? 326Truth@co.kr? A Joongang Ilbo editorialist looks on with disgust:

Look at us. Instead of comforting, we are busy biting each others’ heads off. Korea’s Web citizens were experts on infectious agents amid accusations of mad cow disease in U.S. beef imports, and then wizards at stem cell research when Dr. Hwang Woo-suk came under attack on suspicion of fabricating experiments.

Now they are naval experts. They have mastered the differences among naval mines, explosives and torpedoes that could have attacked the warship. They explain the kinds of damage, including the bubble-jet effect, or water pressure, created by a blast of a mine some distance from a target ship, which can be explosive enough to break up a ship. They debate the possibility of a rupture due to the deterioration of the ship. The polemic is getting more and more inflammatory. If this keeps up, it won’t be only the Cheonan that is torn in two. The entire country can be split apart.

The exact cause of the explosion and sinking can only be known after the ship is hauled to the surface. The military cannot be commended for its early response to the disaster, but at the same time it should not be attacked. New Yorkers waited until the last ashes were gone before dissecting the procedural problems.

The Navy is our only hope if we want to find survivors or their bodies. We must respect the efforts and sacrifice by soldiers like the late officer Han by offering more time. But netizens hungry for titillation don’t specialize in patience, respect or wisdom. [Lee Cheol-Ho, Joongang Ilbo]

This does not stop at blogs and chatrooms. One Democratic Party lawmaker has already offered the unsupported and deeply unpatriotic conjecture that the government would falsify evidence to arrive at a desired outcome. The Hankyoreh is only too happy to print this:

[A] senior official who worked at the Cheong Wa Dae said, “If the truth gets cut off, with the government refusing to offer a truthful answer, the people will become distrustful, and it will not be helpful for national security either in the long term. The official added that the government “must quickly supply the information necessary for the people to make a judgment.

In a radio interview, Democratic Party Lawmaker Park Young-sun said, “There is a tendency in South Korea for the military administration and conservative press to conclude that this kind of incident is an enemy act and to foment an atmosphere of terror.

“In particular, if they control information, it becomes possible to willfully reconstruct the incident in a way unconnected with the truth,” Park added. [The Hanky]

Conspiracy theory is to national policy what pop tarts are to cuisine: quick, easy, filling, loaded with carbs and sugar, and packaged for easy opening by neglected waifs and stoned people. A balanced and reasonably complete analysis of the evidence can be tedious, after all. Not only that, unfounded accusations can be politically profitable for those who don’t care if they polarize a society and destroy its capacity to make informed policy decisions.

In this task, the low characters of Korean cyberspace have had a generous assist from the public relations malpractice of the same government they wish to undermine. The government now appears to understand that it has brought a crisis of confidence down on itself. Just consider the dizzying variety of theories to which senior government officials have given credence since the disaster. At first, the South Korean papers, mostly quoting unnamed military sources, reported that a North Korean torpedo attack was suspected, but in the following hours, the government backpedaled on this, then all but ruled out North Korean involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan. This seemed premature to me before an examination of the ship, when a full debriefing of the witnesses and a review of the evidence could possibly have been done. In the context of escalating North Korean threats and four months after North Korea got the worst of the most recent battle in those same waters, I had to wonder what the South Koreans knew. Did they know the cause to be accidental? Yet in the ensuing days, the evidence mounted that an external explosion of some kind had sunk the Cheonan, which is where things become simply dumbfounding.

Let’s start with the fact that according to the Korea Times, the military had changed the time of the Cheonan‘s explosion no less than four times, starting at 9:45 p.m., then dailing it back to 9:30, 9:25, and 9:15 p.m. (according to the Coast Guard). In the context of a society that will nurse every discrepancy for years to come, that’s time enough for Oswald to have hit every car in the motorcade with a flintlock musket. An accurate time-of-incident would also give context to a rumor from the notorious MBC TV network, citing an anonymous “military source,” about a report of an “unusual situation” on the Cheonan at 9:15. The Navy’s Chief Investigator, Lt. Gen. Park Jung-i, dismisses this and claims that the Navy had “ordinary” radio communications with the Cheonan at 9:19. And it could be critical to determining whether the shots fired at that mysterious radar blip arose from a pre-accidental sighting or rattled, trigger-happy sailors afterward. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

Within a week or so, the broad consensus of the reporting was that the explosion that sank the Cheonan was from an external source, most likely a mine or a torpedo. Navy Chief of Staff Kim Sung-Chan, said that the ship’s ammunition storage room did not explode. Which one, then, mine or torpedo? And whose? If you’re Defense Minister Kim Tae-Young, the answer is “all of the above.”

Initially, Kim seemed to favor the theory that a mine, possibly one left over from the Korean War, caused the explosion, an improbable theory given that no mine had sunk any ship or fishing vessel in those heavily trafficked waters for most of the 60 years following the war. Almost as an afterthought, he suggested that North Korea might also have recently placed the mine. Later, Kim told the National Assembly, “A torpedo or a sea mine might have been involved but a torpedo is a more realistic cause than a mine.” Although the Cheonan‘s sonar hadn’t detected an incoming torpedo, Kim said, “The picture of the cut sections seems like it had been hit by a torpedo directly. For now, that’s the story Kim is sticking to.

Next, Kim claimed that two North Korean submarines were reported in the area in the days before and after the incident, but said that “the odds are low” that they were involved in the incident (ht).

Then there is the matter of the shooting reported after the attack. Did Navy sonar detect something suspicious, suggesting a deliberate North Korean attack, or was this the doing of hypervigilant sailors shooting at what the Navy insists was a flock of birds? If this isn’t the most implausible thing I’ve heard yet about this entire story, then it’s the most disturbing — that South Korean naval radar really can’t distinguish birds from North Korean semi-submersibles like the ones I raised as prime suspects on Day Two. These small, fast craft can operate in shallow waters and are hard to detect, making them ideal for infiltration or sabotage missions. Their crews are elite and exceptionally well trained, and the boats can carry torpedoes or mines.

Graphic from The Korea Times

Most of the reporting now suggests shortly after the attack, radar on the frigate Seokcho picked up something hauling toward the North Korean coast at around 30-40 knots, a plausible speed for either a flock of birds or a fast boat. Because the blip split into two at one point, the Navy explained that the blip was most likely a flock of birds, but did not explain why it could not have been two boats. Unfortunately, the Seokcho’s radar can’t make distinctions of altitude — really? — causing one to wonder how routine it is for the South Korean Navy to open fire on birds that make the mistake of flying the wrong way in those tense waters.

More recent reports, again attributed to anonymous sources within the military, suggest that the Seokcho’s radar picked up something moving north fast shortly before 11 p.m. and reported it to fleet command, which ordered the Seokcho to open fire with its 76-millimeter canons. According to this version, “[t]he command believed that the object was relevant to the sinking, so an order to shoot to destroy was made,” but the blip crossed the Northern Limit Line and escaped into North Korean waters (ht). But bear in mind that in due course, the Navy will likely repudiate all of this and float several other unproven theories in the press, or on the floor of the National Assembly.

There are even more ominous reports, though it would be more accurate to characterize them as rumors. One, also sourced to an anonymous government leaker, holds that “a North Korean submersible or semi-submersible vessel disappeared around the time of the ship’s sinking.” This report claims that the Cheonan was actually searching for a reported North Korean semi-submersible when it sank, but does not necessarily connect the movements to the Cheonan Incident (ht). The Defense Ministry later denied any “abnormal activities by North Korean submersible craft or submarines in relation to this incident.” According to Rear Admiral Lee Ki-Shik, “We didn’t detect any movement by North Korean submarines near the NLL (when the Cheonan sank), and there is a low possibility of North Korea’s dispatch of submarines to the South.”

If that’s so, the Navy could use some help with its message discipline. Picking up from the reports of The Blip and citing (wait for it) anonymous military sources, the conservative Chosun Ilbo reports:

Military insiders believe there is mounting evidence that the Navy corvette Cheonan was hit by a North Korean torpedo before it broke in two and sank in waters near the de-facto inter-Korean border. But the Defense Ministry and military authorities insist on the importance of establishing the exact cause of the incident before any conclusions are announced.

A senior military officer on Thursday said, “There is a 60 to 70 percent chance that the ship was hit” by a North Korean torpedo. But he added the question remains whether any evidence was left behind. He based his speculation on indications that the ship was sunk by an external explosion and that a torpedo was in his view a more likely cause than an old mine from the days of the Korean War, a possibility that has also been floated. [Chosun Ilbo]

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Having showed the collective composure of a chicken farm under mortar fire, the South Korean government is now knocking on Uncle Sam’s door to borrow a cup of credibility. Specifically, it is asking for Washington to help investigate and report on the accident. Part of this must be because America is the guarantor of South Korea’s security and must be involved in confronting the implications of a North Korean attack, but it’s also because President Lee knows his citizens will hardly support a consequential shift in national policy based on the word of his government now. And what will surely follow in the toxic environment known as the Korean Street is that Washington will become a prime target of the conspiracy theorists. We may well be on the cusp of replaying the Great Mad Cow Stampede of ’08.

For its part, the U.S. government has been outwardly skeptical that North Korea was behind the attack. One several levels, that may be wise; after all, nothing is at stake but Korean War II, and given the confusion that the Korean government has sown with its many contradictory statements, it would be unwise for our government to follow it prematurely. The U.S. government may also think that it can rise above the conspiracy theories by downplaying the North Korean link, to which I say, “fat chance.” That deep disturbance in the force you feel is the sense that North Korea will either be proven responsible for this attack, or worse, that it will be the prime suspect but one to which the evidence establishes no affirmative link. In such a case, President Lee would likely demand North Korea’s cooperation with the investigation, cooperation that’s about as likely as North Korean cooperation with the investigation into the shooting death of Park Wang Ja. Either outcome carries with it the potential of a major international crisis on the Korean Peninsula, one that this administration is clearly keen to avoid.

Even as other plausible explanations recede, it is still premature to conclude that North Korea sank the Cheonan. But in light of North Korea’s other recent words and actions, it is not premature to ask why North Korea is spoiling for a fight. Most likely, the regime’s rising unpopularity means that it is reverting to the familiar tactic of diverting popular outrage to foreign enemies. Then there is the matter of the succession campaign of 27 year-old Kim Jong-Eun, whose sole reported achievement so far has been to destroy what remained of the North Korean economy. In a system that bases its legitimacy on its leaders’ heredity and military victories, sinking the Cheonan might provide Kim Jong-Eun a source of desperately needed cred and bragging rights. Whatever the motive, I maintain that a military response would only play to North Korea’s domestic propaganda and its last remaining strength — its military. Instead, the South Korean and U.S. governments should calmly and coldly redouble what is working — the economic constriction of the North Korean regime. This might also include a more aggressive use of the Proliferation Security Initiative to curb North Korean weapons exports.

Most fundamentally, the South Korean and U.S. governments need to grasp the existential incapacity of the North Korean regime to keep its end of any disarmament agreement. Instead of fretting about the harm that this incident will do to their illusory “relations” with Kim Jong Il’s regime, they should shift their focus to subverting it by non-military means while containing the potential security threats associated with a regime collapse that looks increasingly inevitable.

Update: As if on cue, President Lee gives Defense Minister Kim a talking-to for publicly speculating about the cause of the Cheonan Incident. Don’t miss No Cut News’s photograph of the Blue House’s handwritten note to Kim. Evan Ramstad also reports on the embarrassing handling of the incident in the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, I’m not alone in suggesting that North Korea might pick a fight with the South to distract its people from a domestic crisis.