Caption: South Korean corvette ROKS Sinseong. The sinking of her sister ship, ROKS Cheonan by a North Korean submarine this year had me scratching my head. No longer.Image credit: Wikimedia/U.S. Navy
Someplace or another recently, I wrote a comment stating that I didn't understand what was going on in the minds of North Korea when they sank a South Korean corvette in March. Turns out, as is so often the case, our news forgot to provide historical perspective. This is what was on the minds of North Korea, in all likelihood:
The Battle of Daecheong was a skirmish between the South Korean and North Korean navies near the Northern Limit Line (NLL) on 10 November 2009 off Daecheong Island. A patrol boat from North Korea was seriously damaged while the navy of South Korea sustained no casualties.
The incident began around 11:27 am when a North Korean navy patrol boat crossed down through the NLL even though boats from the South Korean navy warned them twice. After one more warning announcement, one of the South Korean patrol boats fired a warning shot. In response, the North Korean boat began firing upon the South Korean ship. This resulted in a short exchange of fire between the sides. The North Korea vessel expended approximately 50 rounds, and the South Korean craft returned fire with 200 rounds.
Wikipedia: Battle of Daecheong
I know this now thanks to an excellent diary by scrowder at FireDogLake. If you want to get some more historical perspective, I recommend going there and reading it.
And the next time you hear of something like this coming seemingly out of the blue, keep in mind it's as likely that the people talking about it don't know, or don't want to know, what the explanation is behind it as that it's really something completely crazy.
4 comments:
Ah, but North Korea almost certainly did not fire a torpedo at the Cheonan. First, to do so a N. Korean sub would have had to slide right into a joint, US-ROK naval exercise...fire the torpedo...and get away. There were at least three Aegis class anti-submarine ships in the area and the Cheonan was an anti-submarine corvette.
Second, the waters off Baengnyong Island where the Cheonan sank are shallow and fast...generally considered impossible for submarines to navigate.
Third, the first distress calls from the Cheonan were "Grounded", not "under attack".
Fourth, the "finding" says that the torpedo exploded beneath the ship (not against it) and that created a bubble jet that ripped the ship in two. (Nice that the torpedo can sink the ship without leaving any trace of an explosion, eh?)
Fifth, the Lee government is gag ordering and filing libel suits against people who question the official explanation (which was released just two weeks before S. Korean, local elections).
True, there's history to be considered. For one, the DPRK considers Baengnyong-do to be within its waters, but the ROK occupies it. I've been close to the NLL off Baengnyong-do in a fishing boat. The navies and fishing fleets chase each other back and forth all the time. The island is on permanent war footing (half the population being ROK Marines, fully ready gun emplacements, live minefields and manned AA batteries...the works).
But this was not that. This was a cooked investigation for political motives. Lee is GNP and has been steadily increasing the belligerence towards the North since his election in 07. If it had been what it's said it was, there would already be real war on the Korean peninsula. And if Kim was going to go that far, he'd have probably tried to take the island...but not with the US Navy hanging around.
An international investigative team concluded the corvette was probably sunk by a torpedo, most likely from a North Korean submarine. The article I cited discussed circumstantial evidence indicating that a general who had been demoted after the Daecheong battle was promoted again after the Cheonan was sunk.
Since there are no citations for any of the facts you're alleging, and I couldn't find any such assertions in what I've read, I'm not going to respond to it.
http://www.seoprise.com/board/view.php?table=seoprise_12&uid=154146
(Scroll past Hangul for English, maps and pictures.)
Do i need to find citation that the Cheonan was an anti-submarine Corvette? It obviously did not detect a submarine in torpedo range.
http://inthesenewtimes.com/2010/05/28/the-sinking-of-the-cheonan-another-gulf-of-tonkin-incident/
(Full timeline with lots of citations.)
"The disaster took place precisely in the waters where what the Pentagon has called "one of the world's largest simulated exercises" was underway. This war exercise, known as "Key Resolve/Foal Eagle" was launched on March 8 and was slated to continue until April 30.[16][17]
The Key Resolve/Foal Eagle exercise on the West Sea near the Northern Limit Line (NLL) was aimed at keeping a more watchful eye on North Korea as well as training for the destruction of weapons of mass destruction in the North. It involved scores of ultra-modern US and South Korean warships equipped with the latest technology.[17]"
(That's from Wikipedia, which also tells the now standard history of the event.)
One of my points was that encounters in the area are very common. The one you're citing was just the most publicized in a while. I lived about 100 miles from where this happened and kept fairly abreast of the news. I've been to the island that this happened off of, and spent some time with an ex-ROK Marine in his fishing boat, who told me lots of stories about the navies and fishermen chasing each other.
And you're basing your conclusion on circumstantial evidence about a demotion and promotion within the DPRK's navy...a nation, btw, that US intelligence has never penetrated. Really?
Besides, if it was what the investigation says it was, there'd already be a real war.
Here's some context, and much more valuable context than the diary from FDL (which was using sources like One Free Korea...which is pretty laughable, really)
http://www.counterpunch.com/lee06042010.html
Oh look, it's Goldman Sachs salivating at the opportunity to get at the mineral riches of the Hermit Kingdom, working with an extremely right wing S. Korean government (heirs to Park Chung-hee's military dictatorship...which was supported and called democracy by the US)
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