Written by intern En-hye Lee

After concluding through the investigation that North Korea is responsible for the sinking of Cheonan naval vessel, Lee administration has been implementing punitive measures against the North. Not only the South Korean government but also the Obama administration has highly criticized North Korea claiming that it will impose stringent sanctions.  In response to this ultra-hardline measures, North Korea vehemently denied involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan, severing all ties with South Korea and threatening an all-out war if sanctioned or punished for the incident.  This deteriorated situation was followed by the results of the investigation announced by the joint-civilian military investigation team, remaining a number of questions.  Even though the South Korean government and the military officials announced the ‘critical evidence’ showing that the fragments and debris were found in the salvaged ship and claiming that the ‘No.1’ marking is similar to that on the North Korean torpedo found in the past, people are still curious as to whether the investigation team has secured some decisive piece of evidence that it has yet to release to the media.
 
First of all, South Korean government has not fully disclosed collected evidence. The government repeated that the whole investigation cannot be shown to the public on account of military characteristics and security issues. Hiding and fabricating the evidence led to the public distrust and the deep secrecy made investigation untrustworthy. Many people have requested the disclosure of the whole investigation in order to know the truth, however, Lee administration refused to reveal complete evidence leaving some suspicions. It is likely that the administration was maintaining exclusive control over information during the investigation process. Distrust can only go away if there is a maximally transparent disclosure of data and continued efforts at logical explanation based on scientific examination.

Second is the condition of the Cheonan’s gas turbine room.  It is not clear why the gas turbine room has not been fully reported even though the joint-civilian military investigation team stated that this part is crucial to find out the cause of the accident. Though this area is the essential part to clarify the cause of the incident, it has not been fully investigated since the salvage operation was done right before the day of announcement. Nearly nothing has been presented by the government authority regarding gas turbine room.

Thirdly, the marking which has been proved to be North Korean letter was discovered on one of the propellers. The investigation team announced that the letter was for sure handwritten by North Korea and it has been claimed that this lettering was similar to the one on the North Korean torpedo found in the past. Regarding this statement, some people cast doubt on the handwritten ‘No.1’ marking. It is too far-fetched to say that this marking is the ‘smoking gun’ to conclude that North Korea is the suspect. 

In addition, the crux of the suspicions was the fact that although the gas resulting from the underwater explosion would have broken the hull while traveling with tremendous speed and power, no water column was witnessed. Many people questioned how only the hull could have gently split in half vertically without so much as a drop of water spattering, but the investigation team offered no response. The team emphasized that they had gone through a number of times of simulations, however, the result of the simulations only presents the part regarding the vessel being damaged by the water explosion.

Moreover, it is obvious that the South Korean military can trace the Cheonan vessel’s naval route with the KNTDS(Korean Naval Tactical Data System).  With the help of KNTDS, the accident can be elucidated by the documents and records containing information on the correspondence records in order to find out the Cheonan’s route and the speed of the vessel. Not only KNTDS and the documents but TOD(Thermal Observation Device) images were controversial . Lee Jung Hee, a member of Democratic Labor Party, contended that although the Ministry of National Defense made it clear that there were no images recorded by a thermal observation device(TOD), which captured the point when the ship was split into two, the top officers in Joint Chief of Staff(JCS) saw the images during the incident.  The government finally showed the TOD video and images on the day of announcement, however, the video did not contain the right moment of the incident.  In light of this, it is understood that these are the reasons why the military investigation team and the government continues to avoid releasing the whole investigation to the public under the pretext of military secrecy and national security.

Last but not least, there is a huge question on the reason why President Lee is being reluctant to North Korea’s request of dispatching inspectors to the South. The minister of people’s armed forces of North Korea said that the South Korean government of Lee Myung-bak should unconditionally receive the inspection group and clarify the truth in the eyes of the world. However, we cannot help but cast doubt on this issue regarding rejecting North Korean inspection group.  If the Lee administration and the military investigation team were confident and had a will to solve this problem with the North diplomatically, there’s no need to hesitate or refuse North Korean inspectors to visit South Korea. It is not understandable that South Korean government has not accepted North Korea’s request of dispatching inspection team.  South Korean government could have given one last chance to North Korea to explain the situation. Then the inter-Korean relation would have been better than this current situation.

Many media coverage raised technical and political questions regarding the North Korea’s involvement in this incident. However, these mysterious doubts are still not solved and clarified yet. The ruling Grand National Party (GNP) is currently calling for the adoption of a resolution in the National Assembly for sanctions against North Korea, but their sequence is completely out of order. Discussing the resolution can wait until the findings have been examined and the questions have been fully answered.