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Monday, March 29, 2010    

Warship sinks near North Korea for reasons that may never surface

By Donald Kirk

WASHINGTON — The explosion and sinking of a South Korean warship in the West or Yellow Sea near the North Korean coast set off alarm bells in Washington and Seoul. The question was whether North Korea was again making good on threats to challenge South Korean control beneath the "northern limit line" (NLL) set by the United Nations Command three years after the Korean War ended in 1953.   

Now both South Korea and the U.S. want to tamp down tensions, to find the evidence that explains away the explosion, which claimed the lives of up to 46 of the ship's 104 sailors in the worst incident to occur in the disputed waters off the west coast of North and South Korea since the Korean War.

The truth may be difficult to fathom for the simple reason that both South and North Korea have mined the sea on either side of the NLL. Both presumably know where they planted their mines, but they may have drifted in the strong currents that roil the Yellow Sea. The North Koreans may not be sophisticated enough to have deliberately set off a mine beneath the ship, and the waters are not believed deep enough for a submarine to have found and fired on the target.


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Whoever was responsible, the explosive was huge enough to tear the 1,200-ton corvette Cheonan apart, trapping the 46 missing sailors in the aft of the ship as it plunged to the bottom. The rest of the vessel apparently stayed afloat long enough for the other sailors to get out, many of them plunging into the sea before it too slipped below the waves. It was not until Monday, 69 hours after the blast on Friday, that South Korean navy vessels found the missing aft portion, blown about 50 meters away from the main section.

The North Koreans, if they were in no way responsible, could not have asked for a more fortuitous accident to frustrate their South Korean enemy.

The corvette has been plying a steady course through those waters for years, on constant guard for North Korean intrusions below the NLL. South Korean vigilance goes up as the spring crabbing season approaches and North Korean fishermen are most willing to risk forays below the line.

It was in that atmosphere that two of the fiercest naval battles in Korea's modern history occurred in the same area, the first in June 1999 when South Korean vessels turned back a North Korean attack, sending one of the North Korean vessels fleeing and eventually sinking with at least 40 sailors aboard.

Then, in June 2002, on the final day of the soccer World Cup in South Korea, when most South Koreans were glued to the TV watching their beloved Red Devils battle to an unexpected fourth place, the North Koreans attacked again. This time, six South Korean sailors were killed, and their patrol boat sank while under tow to port. That vessel, eventually pulled to the surface, is now on display at the Korean navy headquarters down the west coast at Pyongtaek, with red circles marking the holes where the North Korean shells and bullets struck.

Tensions rose again last November when a North Korean vessel crossed the NLL and a South Korean ship fired warning shots. After the North Koreans responded with some shots of their own, the South Koreans opened up with all they had, sending the vessel into retreat in flames back to port and presumably killing a number of North Korean sailors.

The North Korean intrusion in November may have been timed to precede a visit to the region by President Barack Obama, who arrived in Seoul a week later from Beijing. North Korea since then has issued frequent warnings of the dangers of war breaking out in the area while denying as always the legitimacy of the NLL and declaring the right of North Korean boats to go south of the line.

Those warnings, while not exactly ignored, have generally drawn shrugs even from military and diplomatic experts. Officials in Washington and Seoul would like nothing better than to be able to determine the cause of last Friday's explosion, the worst disaster to befall the South Korean navy since 1974 when 159 sailors were drowned when their ship went down in a storm on the southeastern coast.

All the U.S. or South Korean commands have said so far is that there was no sign of "unusual" movements by the North Koreans — movement of troops on shore. There were also no reports of live-fire artillery exercises of the sort that got everyone on edge earlier this year.

The relative quiet on the North Korean southwest coast, however, does not rule out the possibility that the North Koreans had seeded the water with mines — or that the South Koreans had run over one of their own. The answer to the question of whether the vessel was ripped asunder by a mine may become more clear after a U.S. rescue vessel named the Salvo uses its special equipment for bringing up the bodies of trapped sailors — and also for sounding out the exact dimensions of the damage.

Another possibility is that the vessel was torn apart by an explosion of its own ammunition or fuel, or it could have collided with hidden rocks. Some of the rescued sailors, however, reportedly ruled out the former while the latter appeared unlikely considering the long experience of South Korean naval forces in those waters. South Korea President Lee Myung-Bak, not hinting at North Korean involvement, called only for a "quick and thorough investigation" into "all possibilities".

As for the North Koreans, they have said nothing at all about the incident while engaging in an array of intimidation tactics.

The most potentially intimidating was a North Korean military charge that South Korea and the U.S. were persisting in using the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas for "inter-Korean confrontation." As reported by Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency, a military spokesman warned that more such acts might result in "unpredictable incidents" and loss of lives.

The statement appeared a threat to the tourist trips conducted every day in which buses carry thousands of people from hotels in Seoul to the truce village of Panmunjom, 60 kilometers north of the capital.

It was at Panmunjom, in the Joint Security Area, where North Korean troops faced South Koreans and Americans, that the armistice ending the Korean War was signed in July 1953. The North Koreans apparently are upset by plans for events marking the 60th anniversary of the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950.

At the same time, North Korea has been conducting a close inspection of all the facilities made by South Koreans at the tourist zone at the base of Mount Kumkang. The inspection appears as part of an effort to intimidate South Korea, which stopped all tourism to the zone after a South Korean woman was shot and killed by North Korean soldiers when she wandered outside the area in July 2008 to look at the sunrise.

And on Friday, the day of the sinking of the ship, the Korean Central News Agency quoted a North Korean spokesman as threatening "unprecedented nuclear strikes" against South Korea and the U.S. as punishment for "those who seek to bring down the system" in North Korea. The statements seemed so routine as to go virtually unnoticed.

Now, the nagging question remains whether the sinking of the corvette was an act of war or, as the Americans and South Koreans would like to believe, an accident. Until proven otherwise, North Korea is presumed not guilty.



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