[Editorial] Uncovering the truth about the Cheonan

Posted on : 2010-06-11 16:25 KST Modified on : 2010-06-11 16:25 KST

Yesterday, the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) announced the findings of its inspection of the response to the Cheonan sinking. While BAI did expose issues with the military’s response, the audit only raises the question of whether it is avoiding key issues and attempting to bring the incident to a neat close. The findings were a disappointment that prompt one to question the BAI’s overall genuineness and responsibility.

According to the announcement, not one of the core command organizations - the Navy Second Fleet Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the Defense Ministry -fulfilled its proper function according to rules and regulations at the time of the incident. All of them made mistakes, such as being slow in reporting and failing to communicate the entire extent of the situation.

Moreover, the soldiers in these command positions routinely lied and willfully altered the time and cause of the incident. If such problems exist in the military command, the people cannot expect the military as a whole to demonstrate proper operational capabilities. The command’s lying and story changing are even more worthy of censure. Given that the government carried out its investigation into the cause of the sinking with the military at the helm, leaving this very command in place, it stands to reason that skepticism over the findings would continue unabated.

Assuming the government’s investigation into the cause was accurate in its findings, the key question is what the military was doing up until a North Korean submersible infiltrated South Korean waters with the military might of South Korea and the U.S. spread far and wide engaged in joint training exercises. In other words, taking precedence over the follow-up measures after inspection, it was a determination of inspection to investigate why the overall failure in alertness occurred and where responsibility lay.

However, BAI concluded the problem was “failing to exercise appropriate measures, including strengthened antisubmarine capabilities, with the Cheonan and its inadequate submersible response capabilities positioned near Baengnyeong Island.” This is truly incomprehensible. The Cheonan had equipment such as sound detectors on board and specialized in antisubmarine operations. BAI simply accepted the military’s self-exculpatory claim that the Cheonan’s response capabilities were inadequate. This is why it appears to many that BAI was trying to express a neat resolution the incident rather than determine the truth. As a result, BAI excluded the captain of the Cheonan from its list of people to receive disciplinary action. This goes against the general principle of holding the entire upper command line to account, including the head of the unit in question, when there has been a failure in alertness.

In light of this, one cannot help drawing the conclusion that political considerations played a part in the Cheonan inspection. There have even been allegations that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Lee Sang-eui was unable to fulfill his role as military commander properly because he was intoxicated at the time of the accident. This still remains a question in spite of the BAI’s announcement.

In the immediate wake of the incident, President Lee Myung-bak personally handled the rescue operation and national security response posture, presiding over four meetings of national security-related ministers. But there was a severe problem of inefficiency, as rescue equipment and workers were not dispatched promptly. Even though inadequacies were revealed in the response of the president, the commander-in-chief of the military, and in the national crisis management system linking the Cheong Wa Dae (the presidential office in South Korea or Blue House) with the relevant organizations, the BAI inspection steered clear of making any mention of this.

Far from determining the truth about the incident and the distribution of responsibility, this inspection has actually left us with more questions and unresolved issues.

In essence, every problem that was dreaded since the time the BAI embarked on this inspection has come to the fore. In light of such an inept response, one cannot expect to glean any lesson that could stop similar incidents from happening in the future either. We cannot simply accept these findings and move on. A National Assembly special committee, or a body of that nature, should carry out a thorough examination of the both the BAI’s inspection findings and the findings of the joint civilian-military team’s investigation into the cause of the sinking.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]