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More questions raised over South Korea’s sunken ship

Posted on behalf of David Cyranoski

South Korea’s bid to convince the world that North Korea sank its corvette, the Cheonan, had another setback today. A Korean newspaper, the Hankyoreh, reported that a group of Russian experts investigating the matter came to a very different conclusion — that the ship sank after striking a mine.

A document titled “Data from the Russian Naval Expert Group’s Investigation into the Cause of the South Korean Naval Vessel Cheonan’s Sinking,” which Hankyoreh claims to have obtained yesterday, reportedly details the conclusions from a Russian group of experts that visited South Korea in early June to investigate the March sinking.

Previously, Korean opposition politicians, Korean civil rights groups, and US- and Canada-based scientists have raised questions concerning some of the scientific claims made by South Korea and its allies in a report that pinned blame on a torpedo from a North Korean ship. But while these generally found flaws in the report, they did not have another explanation for the tragedy.

According to the series of Hankyoreh articles, the Russians proposed that the Cheonan ran aground and as it struggled to make it back to deep water, it triggered a mine.

Evidence given includes damage to the blades of propellers suggesting that the boat had hit ground. The Russian report also notes that remnants of fishing nets were stuck to one propeller offering a possible reason that the ship lost control when in shallow water. The article notes the presence of South Korean mines in the area, placed there in the 1970s to prevent North Korean ships from entering the area.

Even the timing of the incident is contested. According to the official South Korean report, the accident occurred at 21:21:58 local time. But CCTV on the ship recorded its last image at 21:17:03. The South Korean government has reportedly claimed that the clock on the CCTV was not accurate. But the Russian report also points out that soldiers aboard the ship made emergency phone calls at 21:12:03, which it suggests might have marked the initial navigation trouble.

The article echoes challenges made on scientific grounds concerning the blue marking on the torpedo used to identify it as North Korean. Others questioned whether such blue markings would have survived an explosion. The Russian report says it is “inconsistent with the normal standards for marking (the location and the method of marking). Visual examination of the torpedo indicates that the torpedo had been in the water for more than six months.”

Nature could not confirm the provenance of the report with Russian authorities. But it has been rumored for a while that the Russian team was critical of the South Korean report, and Russian state media recently quoted Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky as saying that “We still have questions about the results of the [South Korean] probe.”

Clearly the matter is getting hung up on a political divide. South Korea and its allies, the United States and the United Kingdom, have lined up on one side, while the Hankyoreh, a left leaning newspaper is siding with Russia and China on the other. Many observers believe that Russia, along with China, is simply trying to stop other nations placing the blame on North Korea. (Washington Times)

If that is the strategy, it might just be working: neither the UN nor ASEAN backed South Korea’s claim against the North. Seoul’s unwillingness to release its entire report (it has only made a 5-page summary public) has stoked opposition. Many in Korea are calling for an investigation and some are accusing the committee of fabricating data.

Comments

  1. Report this comment

    Cody said:

    I thought they found remnants of a torpedo that supposedly was of North Korean origin…? If they present such evidence, it’d be pretty unequivocal.

  2. Report this comment

    augustin said:

    It was convenient to point finger at the ‘usual suspect’-like in the final scene of ‘Casablanca’. The media in the West do not seem aware that the SK gov. report is about 400pp long, while the published summary is only about 5pp. The opposition party is asking for the full publication ever since. Instead of going along the ‘usual suspect’ way, we should request the SK authority to publish all. Russia should also make public its findings, instead of communication to a few governments.

    This unfortunate ‘incident’ may change the NE Asian situation much worse than needed. Sometimes there is this nagging feeling that this incident is being exploited (or manipulated) to advance certain line of international politics.

  3. Report this comment

    Randal Marlin said:

    The South Korean-U.S. line would be more credible if they gave North Korea a chance to inspect the evidence. In what fair system of justice is an accused found guilty in the absence of an opportunity to see the evidence upon which the conviction is based?

    Canada sent three inspectors, but I was given the name only of the leader (Captain Steve Virgin) and was denied the possibility of interviewing him.

  4. Report this comment

    Seung-Hun Lee said:

    The torpedo fragments that the JIG presented as the smoking gun is now proven to be completely false.

    One of the keys to find out what really happened to the corvette Cheonan is the damaged condition of the wing blades of the propellers (or screws) of the ship. As the Russian report stated, the damaged blades tell us that the ship was grounded (hitting the ocean floor) before the sinking.

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    Mutuelle santé said:

    If the Russian report is contradicting the report of the south Korean. It may be the mine that had caused the shipwreck. But the question remain , why there is conflict in the two reports about the shipwreck ?

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