The Sinking of the South Korean Warship Cheonan ~ ASIAN DEFENCE

Friday, May 28, 2010

The Sinking of the South Korean Warship Cheonan

7:36 PM ASIAN DEFENCE No comments

Who Sank the South Korean Warship Cheonan? Destabilization of the Korean Peninsula

Introduction

At 9:22 on the night of March 26, the 1,200 ton ROK Navy corvette Cheonan was on patrol when it was severed in two and sank in the waters off Baengnyeong Island, a contested area twenty kilometers from North Korea, the closest point of South Korean territory to the North and to Pyongyang. Forty-six crew members died and 58 of the 104 member crew were rescued. It was the worst ROK naval disaster since 1974 when a navy landing ship capsized killing 159 sailors.With polls in early May showing that 80 percent of ROK citizens believe that the sinking was caused by North Korean attack, tensions have remained high.The article that follows does not resolve the case by any means. But it exposes anomalies in official accounts and invites scrutiny of a range of intriguing issues that call for further investigation.

136 underwater mines were installed in response to the tensions in the Yellow Sea and, ten years later, fewer than ten percent had been removed

The Cheonan and the “suspicion” of inadvertent attack during the ROK-US Joint Military Exercise

When military secrets were exposed by the sinking of the Cheonan, the military started to take measures

Mistaking the American Submarine for a North Korean Submarine?

China’s Role in North-South Arbitration After the Cheonan Incident

Rep. Park Yongson Engages the Minister of National Defense over “The American Inadvertent Bombing Theory,” which was Officially Rejected as False

N.Korea’s reinvestigation proposal alters Cheonan situation

In its response to the South Korean government’s announcement Thursday of its finding that the Cheonan sank due to a torpedo attack by a North Korean submersible, North Korea played a card no one saw coming. The country offered a formal counterproposal by its highest organization of authority, the National Defense Commission, to “send a Democratic People’s Republic of Korea National Defense Commission review team to the site in South Choson to verify the evidence.”

Directly, this is an expression of North Korea’s intention to send a fact-finding team to prove that it had nothing to do with the sinking of the Cheonan. But in reality, there is a far deeper and broader strategy at play in the context of inter-Korean relations and the geopolitics of the Korean Peninsula.“It is unprecedented in the history of inter-Korean relations for North Korea to propose sending an investigation team in response to an issue that has been deemed a ‘military provocation by North Korea,’” said Kim Yeon-chul, professor of unification studies at Inje University. “The Cheonan situation has entered a new phase.”

Cheonan sunk by German-made torpedo

Investigators probing the deadly sinking of a South Korean navy ship in March near the North have concluded that a torpedo was the source of an explosion that destroyed the vessel, a news report said on Friday.The team of South Korean and foreign investigators found traces of explosives used in torpedoes on several parts of the sunken ship as well as pieces of composite metal used in such weapons, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said quoting a senior government official.

South Korean officials have not officially accused the North but made little secret of their belief Pyongyang deliberately torpedoed the 1,200-tonne corvette Cheonan in March near their disputed border in retaliation of a naval firefight last year.

'Obvious' North Korea Sank South Korean Ship

A North Korean torpedo was responsible for the March 26 sinking of a South Korean navy ship and the deaths of 46 sailors aboard, South Korean officials said. Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said today it was "obvious" that the North Koreans sank the Cheonan warship as it sailed near the disputed water between the two Koreas.

Officials in Seoul and Washington told ABC News that the South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak is preparing a statement for early next week that will officially blame the North and inevitably ratchet up tensions in the region. The smoking gun is a propeller that presumably powered the torpedo which a pair of South Korean fishing boats found at the bottom of the ocean last weekend. The propeller itself was in a "relatively fine condition," reported Chosun Ilbo, South Korea's largest daily newspaper.

The Sinking of the Cheonan: We Are Being Lied To

by Scott Creighton

There is no doubt about it, there is no longer any reason to hold back, I have looked at the “evidence” and have concluded that we are being lied to, again, by our “leaders” in the White House in order to fabricate a measure of moral justification for yet another “regime change” campaign or an all out war with North Korea. There simply is no “perfect match” like the recent unsigned report claims there is.The White House said Monday that President Barack Obama “fully supports” the South Korean president and his response to the torpedo attack by North Korea that sank a South Korean naval ship. MSNBC

South Korea’s president said Monday his nation will no longer tolerate North Korea’s “brutality” and said the regime would pay for a surprise torpedo attack that killed 46 South Korean sailors. ABC NewsNorth Korea has denied responsibility for the sinking of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, on March 26, which left 46 sailors dead. A growing body of evidence assembled by the South has suggested a North Korean torpedo sank the ship. New York Times.