Holed Cheonan stern ups the ante
By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - Korean authorities are having severe problems avoiding a most inconvenient truth: North Korea was behind the sinking of the corvette Cheonan with a loss of 46 lives on March 26.
The salvaging of the stern portion of the 1,200-ton vessel, containing most of the bodies of the drowned sailors, exposed for all to see the gaping hole that tore the vessel asunder - and was clearly not the kind of gash one might expect from an "internal explosion" of ammunition or running aground.
Admittedly the live-on-TV show of the vessel rising from the deep and onto a salvage boat was not so close up for the world to examine the exact nature of the damage. That was up to an investigative team, one of whose leaders said, in understatement, that chances of "an external explosion" were "higher than that of an internal explosion".
Then, a few minutes later, the co-leader of the team, Yoon Dok-yong, upgraded the chances of "external explosion" - presumably a mine or torpedo - to "very high".
Credit President Lee Myung-bak with doing his best to reduce emotions that could lead to recriminations. If there's one thing Lee does not want, it's to risk a "second Korean War" or even a prolonged naval engagement in the disputed waters of the West (Yellow) Sea where the ship went down on routine patrol three weeks ago.
As suspicions mount, however, Lee has to face up to the question of how to respond to what is surely one of the more audacious assaults on South Korean forces since the end of the Korean War of the early 1950s. In his wish to avoid an armed confrontation that could escalate to a crisis, he may be at odds with Defense Minister Kim Tae-young, whom he told earlier to play down suggestions that North Korea may be to blame.
The defense minister was at it again on Friday, however, calling the sinking "a grave national security issue" as pressure mounts on Lee to adopt a strong position. South Korean television networks have begun showing bits and pieces of wreckage while divers search the depths for more shreds of evidence as to what really happened.
Conservative Koreans, meanwhile, are beginning to compare the sinking of the Cheonan to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon of September 11, 2001, in which more than 3,000 people died.
Just as 9/11 shook Americans out of their lethargy and awakened them to the dangers of terrorism by foreign forces, the conservatives are saying, so the Cheonan incident may be a wake-up call to the threat of war in the West Sea and perhaps all along the line between the two Koreas. No one imagines that a second Korean War will really happen, but the danger remains of shootouts at least across the borders with North Korea both at sea and along the demilitarized zone that stretches 250 kilometers across the Korean peninsula.
Lee, for his part, appears reluctant to hold North Korea responsible if only because South Korea might then have to retaliate. "What's wrong with the government in coping with the emergency is they're not really talking about what to do when it becomes proven," said Jeon Jae-wook, chief strategy officer at a scientific research firm in Seoul.
Jeon believes North Korean strategists carefully selected a target that was large enough to demonstrate the North's strength in the disputed West Sea waters but not so large as to bring about a war. "They carefully calculated what would be the tolerable in terms of numbers," he said. "We still have an option of a limited strike, but everyone says we may have to wait until the truth comes out."
Choi Young-jae at the National Unification Advisory Council, which plays a consulting role for Lee, believes "we cannot retaliate with military action" but will have to bring the case before the United Nations and the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
In any case, the sinking of the Cheonan has stymied the protracted process of persuading North Korea to return to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons program. North Korea appeared to be about to return to the talks, last held in December 2008, before the ship went down on routine patrol south of the Northern Limit Line, set by the United Nations Command in 1956 below which North Korean boats cannot venture.
At the Korea Institute of National Unification, affiliated with the Unification Ministry, analyst Choi Jin-wook described six-party talks as "ruined, collapsed". And at the Sejong Institute, which has strong ties with the government, analyst Paik Hak-soon warned that Lee "should be very alert about disruptive aspects" of acting prematurely.
North Korea in recent years has challenged the validity of the line in bloody clashes, most recently in November when a South Korean corvette, similar to the one that was sunk, poured cannon fire onto a North Korean patrol boat, sending it back to port in flames. In the same area, a North Korean boat was sunk with possibly 40 sailors aboard in June 1999, and six South Korean sailors were killed and their patrol boat sunk when North Koreans opened fire on them in June 2002.
North Korea has remained officially silent on the incident, but one defector has been widely quoted as talking about a meeting in February in which the top North Korean naval commander in the region said North Korea had to avenge the incident in November.
South Koreans say the sinking of the Cheonan is a tragedy comparable in a sense with 9/11 in the shock of surprise, of attack by an unknown force and the need to determine the nature of that force and to unite against it. In the case of 9/11, the names of the attackers, their origins and source of funds and inspirations became known almost immediately.
Lee has made much of the difference in outlook between his government and that of Kim Dae-jung, who initiated the "Sunshine" policy in 1998, and his successor, Roh Moo-hyun, who perpetuated the same policy. He has repeatedly said North Korea has to give up its nuclear program as a precondition for resumption of the aid lavished on the North before he defeated another reconciliation-minded candidate in December 2007.
Lee's conservatism, however, is tempered by his emphasis on economic success - and his strong desire not to let a military crisis slow down South Korea's ever-rising gross national product. Nor does he want armed clashes with North Korea to interfere with the role bestowed on him this week at the global summit on nuclear strategy in Washington when South Korea was chosen to host the next such summit in 2012.
That year is significant as the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Jong-il's father, Kim Il-sung, who died in July 1994 but remains officially the North's "eternal president". North Koreans celebrated the 98th anniversary of his birth on Thursday with fireworks, rallies and electronic signs saying "General Kim Il-sung is our sun" and "we will live forever with the president", according to Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency.
The year in 2012 is portentous for yet another reason. That's when the United States formally transfers "operational control" over Korean forces in war time to South Korean command. The Americans insist South Koreans are ready to take over, but South Korean commanders have expressed misgivings.
No one seems to have more misgivings than Lee, a former businessman who somehow avoided the South Korean draft as a young man and never served in the armed forces. As leader of his country, he would like nothing better than to turn the episode into the topic of endless recriminations and rhetoric - anything but shooting and killing.
By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - Korean authorities are having severe problems avoiding a most inconvenient truth: North Korea was behind the sinking of the corvette Cheonan with a loss of 46 lives on March 26.
The salvaging of the stern portion of the 1,200-ton vessel, containing most of the bodies of the drowned sailors, exposed for all to see the gaping hole that tore the vessel asunder - and was clearly not the kind of gash one might expect from an "internal explosion" of ammunition or running aground.
Admittedly the live-on-TV show of the vessel rising from the deep and onto a salvage boat was not so close up for the world to examine the exact nature of the damage. That was up to an investigative team, one of whose leaders said, in understatement, that chances of "an external explosion" were "higher than that of an internal explosion".
Then, a few minutes later, the co-leader of the team, Yoon Dok-yong, upgraded the chances of "external explosion" - presumably a mine or torpedo - to "very high".
Credit President Lee Myung-bak with doing his best to reduce emotions that could lead to recriminations. If there's one thing Lee does not want, it's to risk a "second Korean War" or even a prolonged naval engagement in the disputed waters of the West (Yellow) Sea where the ship went down on routine patrol three weeks ago.
As suspicions mount, however, Lee has to face up to the question of how to respond to what is surely one of the more audacious assaults on South Korean forces since the end of the Korean War of the early 1950s. In his wish to avoid an armed confrontation that could escalate to a crisis, he may be at odds with Defense Minister Kim Tae-young, whom he told earlier to play down suggestions that North Korea may be to blame.
The defense minister was at it again on Friday, however, calling the sinking "a grave national security issue" as pressure mounts on Lee to adopt a strong position. South Korean television networks have begun showing bits and pieces of wreckage while divers search the depths for more shreds of evidence as to what really happened.
Conservative Koreans, meanwhile, are beginning to compare the sinking of the Cheonan to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon of September 11, 2001, in which more than 3,000 people died.
Just as 9/11 shook Americans out of their lethargy and awakened them to the dangers of terrorism by foreign forces, the conservatives are saying, so the Cheonan incident may be a wake-up call to the threat of war in the West Sea and perhaps all along the line between the two Koreas. No one imagines that a second Korean War will really happen, but the danger remains of shootouts at least across the borders with North Korea both at sea and along the demilitarized zone that stretches 250 kilometers across the Korean peninsula.
Lee, for his part, appears reluctant to hold North Korea responsible if only because South Korea might then have to retaliate. "What's wrong with the government in coping with the emergency is they're not really talking about what to do when it becomes proven," said Jeon Jae-wook, chief strategy officer at a scientific research firm in Seoul.
Jeon believes North Korean strategists carefully selected a target that was large enough to demonstrate the North's strength in the disputed West Sea waters but not so large as to bring about a war. "They carefully calculated what would be the tolerable in terms of numbers," he said. "We still have an option of a limited strike, but everyone says we may have to wait until the truth comes out."
Choi Young-jae at the National Unification Advisory Council, which plays a consulting role for Lee, believes "we cannot retaliate with military action" but will have to bring the case before the United Nations and the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
In any case, the sinking of the Cheonan has stymied the protracted process of persuading North Korea to return to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons program. North Korea appeared to be about to return to the talks, last held in December 2008, before the ship went down on routine patrol south of the Northern Limit Line, set by the United Nations Command in 1956 below which North Korean boats cannot venture.
At the Korea Institute of National Unification, affiliated with the Unification Ministry, analyst Choi Jin-wook described six-party talks as "ruined, collapsed". And at the Sejong Institute, which has strong ties with the government, analyst Paik Hak-soon warned that Lee "should be very alert about disruptive aspects" of acting prematurely.
North Korea in recent years has challenged the validity of the line in bloody clashes, most recently in November when a South Korean corvette, similar to the one that was sunk, poured cannon fire onto a North Korean patrol boat, sending it back to port in flames. In the same area, a North Korean boat was sunk with possibly 40 sailors aboard in June 1999, and six South Korean sailors were killed and their patrol boat sunk when North Koreans opened fire on them in June 2002.
North Korea has remained officially silent on the incident, but one defector has been widely quoted as talking about a meeting in February in which the top North Korean naval commander in the region said North Korea had to avenge the incident in November.
South Koreans say the sinking of the Cheonan is a tragedy comparable in a sense with 9/11 in the shock of surprise, of attack by an unknown force and the need to determine the nature of that force and to unite against it. In the case of 9/11, the names of the attackers, their origins and source of funds and inspirations became known almost immediately.
Lee has made much of the difference in outlook between his government and that of Kim Dae-jung, who initiated the "Sunshine" policy in 1998, and his successor, Roh Moo-hyun, who perpetuated the same policy. He has repeatedly said North Korea has to give up its nuclear program as a precondition for resumption of the aid lavished on the North before he defeated another reconciliation-minded candidate in December 2007.
Lee's conservatism, however, is tempered by his emphasis on economic success - and his strong desire not to let a military crisis slow down South Korea's ever-rising gross national product. Nor does he want armed clashes with North Korea to interfere with the role bestowed on him this week at the global summit on nuclear strategy in Washington when South Korea was chosen to host the next such summit in 2012.
That year is significant as the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Jong-il's father, Kim Il-sung, who died in July 1994 but remains officially the North's "eternal president". North Koreans celebrated the 98th anniversary of his birth on Thursday with fireworks, rallies and electronic signs saying "General Kim Il-sung is our sun" and "we will live forever with the president", according to Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency.
The year in 2012 is portentous for yet another reason. That's when the United States formally transfers "operational control" over Korean forces in war time to South Korean command. The Americans insist South Koreans are ready to take over, but South Korean commanders have expressed misgivings.
No one seems to have more misgivings than Lee, a former businessman who somehow avoided the South Korean draft as a young man and never served in the armed forces. As leader of his country, he would like nothing better than to turn the episode into the topic of endless recriminations and rhetoric - anything but shooting and killing.
