Seoul gives up collecting North Korea’s debris

South Korean authorities stop trying to drag fizzled North Korean rocket from the Yellow Sea floor

By Lee Soon-hyuk, staff writer

The government has decided to stop collecting debris from North Korea’s Unha-3 rocket, which exploded shortly after its launch last week and fell into the Yellow Sea.

The Department of Defense announced April 16, “We dispatched ships and airplanes to the area where the rocket fell, but have not found any debris. We decided to stop search and salvage operations from 17:00, April 17.”

The expensive and labor-intensive salvage effort faced uncertain prospects of success, and concerns about a potential international legal dispute.

Another challenge faced by military authorities was the broad area over which the debris fell. A military official said, “The debris scattered over an area of about 6,000 square kilometers, and it takes about a week and costs about 800 million won (about US$803,000) to search one square kilometer of ocean floor with a paired trawler.”

Radar can be used to single out areas where twenty or more chunks of debris fell, but its accuracy is uncertain, since it cannot track the pieces all the way until they hit the water. Debris disappears from radar several kilometers above the surface of the water.

There is also a strong possibility the rocket, which was traveling at Mach 1 or 2 on impact, disintegrated on contact with the water. And with a delay in discovery, there is an increased chance of the pieces being buried under mud flats at the ocean bottom. The fishing nets and garbage in the Yellow Sea will also complicate the search and salvage effort.

A military official said, “With the Cheonan warship [salvage effort] in 2010, we knew the point of the explosion and had an area pinned down, but this is a different story.

"It requires a tremendous amount of time and money, but success isn’t guaranteed, so we’re giving a lot of thought to whether we should go ahead with the salvage effort," the official added.

　

Please direct questions or comments to [[e-mail]]