This is from a post in the New York times website, I thought it was interesting enough to share it:
This is the local election season in Korea, and President Lee's authoritarian government, like the previous regimes of his party, is resorting to red-mongering to garner the support from wary Koreans. They have good reasons to appeal to old dependable tactics like North Threat. This local election almost coincides with the first anniversary of the former President Moo-Hyun Roh's suicide, widely regarded here as orchestrated by President Lee and his minnows for their political gains. His death drew wide condemnation of the current goverment, and his funeral was attended by about 5 million people.
The most curious thing about the sinking of the frigate "Cheonan", which sank amidst the USA-South Korea joint war exercise including the 3 most technologically advanced Aegis cruise ships, nuclear submarines and serveral other warships, is that there are no tell-tale signs of the hard explosion in the ship, although the sinking was allegedly caused by a torpedo! None of sailors dead or alive suffered from the concussions, no dead fish found floating in nearby water, no observation of flashes, or water columns typical of the underwater detonation. Even the structural damages suffered by the ship shows no sign of the detonation of high explosives near or within the ship.
Remember this is the most heavily guarded military zone in the world, barring almost none. At the time when the ship sank, nearby land-based military posts were training their infra-red cameras on it. The Korean military claimed that the crucial few minuites' worth of video on the very event of the frigate torn apart was not recorded, although videos are available before and after. How improbable is it that all the cameras from multipe observation posts whose job is to record all events 24 hours 365 days missed the event? There are even allegations that some high ranking military brasses watched the full video of the event, and that they saw the ship just plitted into two halves. As usual, the Korean military is denying the story.
In order to explain the lack of the apparent hard explosion, the government-appoined military commission in charge of the investigation came up with a ultra-sophisticated "bubble-jet" torpedo scenario . This is the torpedo technology only USA is supposed to have made it to work so far, because it has to be highly intelligent enough to posit the torpedo precisely in the middle of a moving ship, just a few meters below the hull right before the detonation for the optimal effect. Actual requirements for the technology has to be more than sophisticated, because the water around where the ship sank is not only very shallow, only a few meters deep at most, and the tide is fast, at a few knots. And the waves were high at 3 meters on the night of the sinking. Perhaps even treacherous is fishing nets mounted around the water. How smart is the torpedo that can navigate around all these obstacles, and hit the anti-submarine frigate, well south of the border, while leaving no sign of sonar signature! Subsequently the speed boat or submarine escaped undetected. Here we only have to assume that the North Korean navy owns ultra-silent, stealth submarine/submergibles that can evade any conceivable military technology...
The comic thing about the alleged remains of the torpedo the commission herladed as the exhibition A for the public recently is that the torpedo is not the super-sophisticated one they've been arguing for, but the antique variety developed by NK in 1980's.
The Korean military has been refusing to reveal any information related to the sinking, except the pieces of information fitting their own foregone conclusions. Facts as simple as the trajectory of the ship at the fateful night have not been disclosed. Such information would tell a lot about the causes of the sinking. Not that they have not disclosed such information ever before. In the previous administrations, they were a lot more forthcoming. Under the current administration? NopThey behave as if they have the full confidence of the power that be, and they don't need the support from the Korean people.
The ship showed the plenty signs of agrounding. It had numerous scratch marks alongside the hull. The bottom was even slitted with gaping holes, with the stress marks everywhere. All blades of a screw were bent toward the bow and the other torn apart. A sure sign of the ship trying to back off from agrounding.
Lost are in the midst of the Cheonan sinking not only the lives of 46 conscripted and enlisted soldiers (none of officers dead), but also the prospect of the peace between two Koreas, and the transparency of democracy. With the election campaign in full swing, the goverment party is calling anyone who questions the goverment version of the event "the reds", and began indicting them.
We may hear the true story, perhaps in the next government