While the South Korean government announced on May 20 that it has overwhelming evidence that one of its warships was sunk by a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine, there is, in fact, no direct link between North Korea and the sunken ship. And it seems very unlikely that North Korea had anything to do with it.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not my conclusion. It\u2019s the conclusion of Won See-hoon, director of South Korea\u2019s National Intelligence. Won told a South Korean parliamentary committee in early April, less than two weeks after the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, sank in waters off Baengnyeong Island, that there was no evidence linking North Korea to the Cheonan\u2019s sinking. (1)<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s Defense Minister Kim Tae-young backed him up, pointing out that the Cheonan\u2019s crew had not detected a torpedo (2), while Lee Ki-sik, head of the marine operations office at the South Korean joint chiefs of staff agreed that \u201cNo North Korean warships have been detected\u2026(in) the waters where the accident took place.\u201d (3)<\/p>\n
Notice he said \u201caccident.\u201d<\/p>\n
Defense Ministry officials added that they had not detected any North Korean submarines in the area at the time of the incident. (4) According to Lee, \u201cWe didn\u2019t detect any movement by North Korean submarines near\u201d the area where the Cheonan went down. (5)<\/p>\n
When speculation persisted that the Cheonan had been sunk by a North Korean torpedo, the Defense Ministry called another press conference to reiterate \u201cthere was no unusual North Korean activities detected at the time of the disaster.\u201d (6)<\/p>\n
A ministry spokesman, Won Tae-jae, told reporters that \u201cWith regard to this case, no particular activities by North Korean submarines or semi-submarines\u2026have been verified. I am saying again that there were no activities that could be directly linked to\u201d the Cheonan\u2019s sinking. (7)<\/p>\n
Rear Admiral Lee, the head of the marine operations office, added that, \u201cWe closely watched the movement of the North\u2019s vessels, including submarines and semi-submersibles, at the time of the sinking. But military did not detect any North Korean submarines near the country\u2019s western sea border.\u201d (8)<\/p>\n
North Korea has vehemently denied any involvement in the sinking.<\/p>\n
So, a North Korean submarine is now said to have fired a torpedo which sank the Cheonan, but in the immediate aftermath of the sinking the South Korean navy detected no North Korean naval vessels, including submarines, in the area. Indeed, immediately following the incident defense minister Lee ruled out a North Korean torpedo attack, noting that a torpedo would have been spotted, and no torpedo had been spotted. (9)<\/p>\n
The case gets weaker still.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unlikely that a single torpedo could split a 1,200 ton warship in two. Baek Seung-joo, an analyst with the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis says that \u201cIf a single torpedo or floating mine causes a naval patrol vessel to split in half and sink, we will have to rewrite our military doctrine.\u201d (10)<\/p>\n
The Cheonan sank in shallow, rapidly running, waters, in which it\u2019s virtually impossible for submarines to operate. \u201cSome people are pointing the finger at North Korea,\u201d notes Song Young-moo, a former South Korean navy chief of staff, \u201cbut anyone with knowledge about the waters where the shipwreck occurred would not draw that conclusion so easily.\u201d (11)<\/p>\n
Contrary to what looks like an improbable North-Korea-torpedo-hypothesis, the evidence points to the Cheonan splitting in two and sinking because it ran aground upon a reef, a real possibility given the shallow waters in which the warship was operating. According to Go Yeong-jae, the South Korean Coast Guard captain who rescued 56 of the stricken warship\u2019s crew, he \u201creceived an order \u2026that a naval patrol vessel had run aground in the waters 1.2 miles to the southwest of Baengnyeong Island, and that we were to move there quickly to rescue them.\u201d (12)<\/p>\n
Some members of South Korea\u2019s opposition parties \u2013 which have been highly critical of the government for blaming North Korea for the disaster\u2013 \u201ccontend that the boat was sunk either by a \u2018friendly fire\u2019 torpedo during a training exercise or that it broke part while trying to get off a reef.\u201d (13) Whatever the cause, they don\u2019t believe the findings of the official inquiry.<\/p>\n
So how is it that what looked like no North Korean involvement in the Cheonan\u2019s sinking, according to the South Korean military in the days immediately following the incident, has now become, one and half months later, an open and shut case of North Korean aggression, according to government-appointed investigators?<\/p>\n
The answer has much to do with the electoral fortunes of South Korea\u2019s ruling Grand National Party, and the party\u2019s need to marshal support for a tougher stance on the North. Lurking in the wings are US arms manufacturers who stand to profit if South Korean president Lee Myung-bak wins public backing for beefed up spending on sonar equipment and warships to deter a North Korean threat \u2013 all the more likely with the Cheonan incident chalked up to North Korean aggression.<\/p>\n
Lee is a North Korea-phobe who prefers a confrontational stance toward his neighbor to the north to the policy of peaceful coexistence and growing cooperation favored by his recent predecessors (and by Pyongyang, as well. It\u2019s worth mentioning that North Korea supports a policy of peace and cooperation. South Korea, under its hawkish president, does not.) Fabricating a case against the North serves Lee in a number of ways. If voters in the South can be persuaded that the North is indeed a menace \u2013 and it looks like this is exactly what is happening \u2013 Lee\u2019s hawkish policies will be embraced as the right ones for present circumstances. This will prove immeasurably helpful in upcoming mayoral and gubernatorial elections in June.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, Lee\u2019s foreign policy rests on the goal of forcing the collapse of North Korea. When he took office in February 2008, he set about reversing a 10-year-old policy of unconditional aid to the North. He has also refused to move ahead on cross-border economic projects. (14) Lee\u2019s goal, as Selig Harrison, the US establishment\u2019s foremost liberal expert on Korea describes it, is to \u201conce again [seek] the collapse of the North and its absorption by the South.\u201d (15) Forcing the collapse of North Korea was the main policy of past right-wing and military governments to which Lee\u2019s government is historically linked. The claim that the sinking of the Cheonan is due to an unprovoked North Korean torpedo attack makes it easier for Lee to drum up support for his confrontational stance.<\/p>\n
But it does more than that. It also helps Lee move ahead with his goal of re-unifying the Korean peninsula by engineering the collapse of the North. Lee has used the Cheonan incident to: cut off trade with the North; block the North\u2019s use of the South\u2019s shipping lanes; argue for stepped up international sanctions against Pyongyang; call for the beefing up of the South\u2019s military; and issue a virtual declaration of war, branding North Korea the South\u2019s principal foe and announcing that \u201cIt is now time for the North Korean regime to change.\u201d (16) Seoul already spends $20 billion per year on its armed forces, almost three times more than the $7 billion Pyongyang allocates to military spending. South Korea has one of the most miserly social welfare systems in the industrialized world, in part because it spends so much on defense. (17) Only 28 percent of the South\u2019s working population is covered by a government pension plan, a state of affairs that has given rise to \u201c\u2019silver\u2019 job fairs, established to find jobs for people aged 60 and over.\u201d (18) Even so, the South\u2019s military spending as a percentage of its GDP is a drop in the bucket compared to the North\u2019s. With a smaller economy, North Korea struggles (and fails) to keep up with its more formidably armed neighbor, channeling a crushingly large percentage of its GDP into defense. It is caught in a difficult bind in which it not only has to defend its borders against South Korea, but against the 30,000 US troops stationed on the Korean peninsula and twice as many more in nearby Japan. By expanding the South\u2019s military budget, and using the Cheonan affair to put the country on a virtual war footing, Lee forces the North to either divert even more of its limited resources to its military \u2013 a reaction which will ratchet up the misery factor inside the North as guns take even more of a precedence over butter \u2013 or leave itself inadequately equipped to defend itself.<\/p>\n
This meshes well with calls from the RAND Corporation for South Korea to buy sensors to detect North Korean submarines and more warships to intercept North Korean naval vessels. (19) An unequivocal US-lackey \u2013 protesters have called the security perimeter around Lee\u2019s office \u201cthe U.S. state of South Korea\u201d (20) \u2013 Lee would be pleased to hand US corporations fat contracts to furnish the South Korean military with more hardware. Lee\u2019s right-wing party and US military contractors win, while North Koreans and the bulk of Koreans of the south are sacrificed on the altar of South Korean militarism.<\/p>\n
The United States, too, has motivations to fabricate a case against North Korea. One is to justify the continued presence, 65 years after the end of WWII, of US troops on Japanese soil. Many Japanese bristle at what is effectively a permanent occupation of their country by more than a token contingent of US troops. There are 60,000 US soldiers, airmen and sailors in Japan. Washington, and the Japanese government \u2013 which, when it isn\u2019t willingly collaborating with its own occupiers, is forced into submission by the considerable leverage Washington exercises \u2014 justifies the US troop presence through the sheer sophistry of presenting North Korea as an ongoing threat. The claim that North Korea sunk the Cheonan in an unprovoked attack strengthens Washington\u2019s case for occupation. Not surprisingly, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has seized on the Cheonan incident to underline \u201cthe importance of the America-Japanese alliance, and the presence of American troops on Japanese soil.\u201d (21)<\/p>\n
Given these political realities, it comes as no surprise that from the start members of Lee\u2019s party blamed the sinking of the Cheonan on a North Korean torpedo, (22) just as members of the Bush administration immediately blamed 9\/11 on Saddam Hussein, and then proceeded to look for evidence to substantiate their case, in the hopes of justifying an already planned invasion. (Later, the Bush administration fabricated an intelligence dossier on Iraq\u2019s banned weapons.) In fact, the reason the ministry of defense felt the need to reiterate there was no evidence of a North Korean link was the persistent speculation of GNP politicians that North Korea was the culprit. Lee himself, ever hostile to his northern neighbor, said his \u201cintuition\u201d told him that North Korea was to blame. (23) Today, opposition parties accuse Lee of using \u201cred scare\u201d tactics to garner support as the June 2 elections draw near. (24) And leaders of South Korea\u2019s four main opposition parties, as well as a number of civil groups, have issued a joint statement denouncing the government\u2019s findings as untrustworthy. Woo Sang-ho, a spokesman for South Korea\u2019s Democratic Party has called the probe results \u201cinsufficient proof and questioned whether the North was involved at all.\u201d (25)<\/p>\n
Lee announced, even before the inquiry rendered its findings, that a task force will be launched to overhaul the national security system and bulk up the military to prepare itself for threats from North Korea. (26) He even prepared a package of sanctions against the North in the event the inquiry confirmed what his intuition told him. (27) No wonder civil society groups denounced the inquiry\u2019s findings, arguing that \u201cThe probe started after the conclusions had already been drawn.\u201d (28)<\/p>\n
Jung Sung-ki, a staff reporter for The Korean Times, has raised a number of questions about the inquiry\u2019s findings. The inquiry concluded that \u201ctwo North Korean submarines, one 300-ton Sango class and the other 130-ton Yeono class, were involved in the attack. Under the cover of the Sango class, the midget Yeono class submarine approached the Cheonan and launched the CHT-02D torpedo manufactured by North Korea.\u201d But \u201c\u2019Sango class submarines\u2026do not have an advanced system to guide homing weapons,\u2019 an expert at a missile manufacturer told The Korea Times on condition of anonymity. \u2018If a smaller class submarine was involved, there is a bigger question mark.\u2019\u201d (29)<\/p>\n
\u201cRear Adm. Moon Byung-ok, spokesman for [the official inquiry] told reporters, \u2018We confirmed that two submarines left their base two or three days prior to the attack and returned to the port two or three days after the assault.\u2019\u201d But earlier \u201cSouth Korean and U.S. military authorities confirmed several times that there had been no sign of North Korean infiltration in the\u201d area in which the Cheonan went down. (30)<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition, Moon\u2019s team reversed its position on whether or not there was a column of water following an air bubble effect\u201d (caused by an underwater explosion.) \u201cEarlier, the team said there were no sailors who had witnessed a column of water. But during [a] briefing session, the team said a soldier onshore at Baengnyeong Island witnessed \u2018an approximately 100-meter-high pillar of white,\u2019 adding that the phenomenon was consistent with a shockwave and bubble effect.\u201d (31)<\/p>\n
The inquiry produced a torpedo propeller recovered by fishing vessels that it said perfectly match the schematics of a North Korean torpedo. \u201cBut it seemed that the collected parts had been corroding at least for several months.\u201d (32)<\/p>\n
Finally, the investigators \u201cclaim the Korean word written on the driving shaft of the propeller parts was same as that seen on a North Korean torpedo discovered by the South \u2026seven years ago.\u201d But the \u201c\u2019word is not inscribed on the part but written on it,\u2019 an analyst said, adding that \u201c\u2019the lettering issue is dubious.\u2019\u201d (33)<\/p>\n
On August 2, 1964, the United States announced that three North Vietnamese torpedo boats had launched an unprovoked attacked on the USS Maddox, a US Navy destroyer, in the Gulf of Tonkin. The incident handed US president Lyndon Johnson the Congressional support he needed to step up military intervention in Vietnam. In 1971, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon Papers, a secret Pentagon report, revealed that the incident had been faked to provide a pretext for escalated military intervention. There had been no attack.<\/p>\n
The Cheonan incident has all the markings of another Gulf of Tonkin incident. And as usual, the aggressor is accusing the intended victim of an unprovoked attack to justify a policy of aggression under the pretext of self-defense.<\/p>\n
1. Kang Hyun-kyung, \u201cRuling camp differs over NK involvement in disaster\u201d, The Korea Times, April 7, 2010.
\n2. Nicole Finnemann, \u201cThe sinking of the Cheonan\u201d, Korea Economic Institute, April 1, 2010. http:\/\/newsmanager.commpartners.com\/kei\/issues\/2010-04-01\/1.html
\n3. \u201cMilitary leadership adding to Cheonan chaos with contradictory statements\u201d, The Hankyoreh, March 31, 2010.
\n4. \u201cBirds or North Korean midget submarine?\u201d The Korea Times, April 16, 2010.
\n5. Ibid.
\n6. \u201cMilitary plays down N.K. foul play\u201d, The Korea Herald, April 2, 2010.
\n7. Ibid.
\n8. \u201cNo subs near Cheonan: Ministry\u201d, JoongAng Daily, April 2, 2010.
\n9. Jean H. Lee, \u201cSouth Korea says mine from the North may have sunk warship\u201d, The Washington Post, March 30, 2010.
\n10. \u201cWhat caused the Cheonan to sink?\u201d The Chosun Ilbo, March 29, 2010.
\n11. Ibid.
\n12. \u201cMilitary leadership adding to Cheonan chaos with contradictory statements\u201d, The Hankyoreh, March 31, 2010.
\n13. Barbara Demick, \u201cIn South Korea, competing reactions to sinking of warship\u201d, The Los Angeles Times, May 28, 2010.
\n14. Blaine Harden, \u201cBrawl Near Koreas\u2019 Border,\u201d The Washington Post, December 3, 2008.
\n15. Selig S. Harrison, \u201cWhat Seoul should do despite the Cheonan\u201d, The Hankyoreh, May 14, 2010.
\n16. \u201cFull text of President\u2019s Lee\u2019s national address\u201d, The Korea Times, May 24, 2010.
\n17. Selig S. Harrison, \u201cWhat Seoul should do despite the Cheonan\u201d, The Hankyoreh, May 14, 2010.
\n18. Su-Hyun Lee, \u201cAging and seeking work in South Korea,\u201d The New York Times, September 11, 2009.
\n19. \u201cKim So-hyun, \u201cA touchstone of Lee\u2019s leadership\u201d, The Korea Herald, May 13, 2010.
\n20. The New York Times, June 12, 2008.
\n21. Mark Landler, \u201cClinton condemns attack on South Korean Ship\u201d, The New York Times, May 21, 2010.
\n22. Kang Hyun-kyung, \u201cRuling camp differs over NK involvement in disaster\u201d, The Korea Times, April 7, 2010.
\n23. \u201cKim So-hyun, \u201cA touchstone of Lee\u2019s leadership\u201d, Korea Herald, May 13, 2010.
\n24. Kang Hyun-kyung, \u201cRuling camp differs over NK involvement in disaster\u201d, The Korea Times, April 7, 2010; Choe Sang-Hun, \u201cSouth Korean sailors say blast that sank their ship came from outside vessel\u201d, The New York Times, April 8, 2010.
\n25. Cho Jae-eun, \u201cProbe satisfies some, others have doubts\u201d, JoongAng Daily, May 21, 2010.
\n26. \u201cKim So-hyun, \u201cA touchstone of Lee\u2019s leadership\u201d, The Korea Herald, May 13, 2010.
\n27. \u201cSeoul prepares sanctions over Cheonan sinking\u201d, The Choson Ilbo, May 13, 2010.
\n28. Cho Jae-eun, \u201cProbe satisfies some, others have doubts\u201d, JoongAng Daily, May 21, 2010.
\n29. Jung Sung-ki, \u201cQuestions raised about \u2018smoking gun\u2019\u201d, The Korea Times, May 20, 2010.
\n30. Ibid.
\n31. Ibid.
\n32. Ibid.
\n33. Ibid.<\/p>\n
Most of the articles cited here are posted on Tim Beal\u2019s DPRK- North Korea website, http:\/\/www.vuw.ac.nz\/~caplabtb\/dprk\/<\/a>, an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Korea.<\/p>\n