North Korea’s National Defense Commission, chaired by the country’s leader Kim Jong-il, issued its statement in the midst of a briefing by South Korean defense officials on the torpedo they say split and sank the Cheonan.
Pyongyang offered to send its own investigators to South Korea to examine the evidence as weighed by a team of investigators from South Korea, United States, Britain, Australia, and Sweden. The offer was viewed as rhetorical, though, since North and South Korea have stopped virtually all talks.
International attention
While the leaders of the defense team explained in detail how the torpedo sank the corvette on March 26, South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak promised “resolute countermeasures” to make North Korea “admit its wrongdoings.” He added, however, that he hoped to achieve that goal “through strong international cooperation.”
That qualifier ruled out the threat of military retaliation against the base from which investigators say North Korea staged its attack, dispatching small submarines and a “mother ship” into disputed waters in the Yellow Sea (also called the West Sea).
The South’s response “will be very muted,” predicts Tim Peters, a longtime resident of Seoul who works on North Korean human rights issues. President Lee, a former business leader with no military background, will probably make “every attempt to dilute the response through the international community so investor confidence will not be troubled,” he says.
Though foreign diplomats and military officers packed the briefing room at the Defense Ministry, none came from the Chinese Embassy. China, North Korea’s closest ally, may oppose or seek to water down any attempts by South Korea and the US to pass tougher sanctions against the North in the United Nations Security Council.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman in Beijing hinted at China’s lukewarm position when he urged all sides to “remain calm” and not risk an escalation of tensions. A Chinese official called the episode “unfortunate.”
Further threats
The South Korean military co-leader of the investigation acknowledged the remaining threat posed by North Korea’s 70 submarines, many of them based in ports on the Yellow Sea above the Northern Limit Line, below which the South bars North Korean ships. North Korea has long disputed the line, and it was in those disputed waters, off an island held by the South since the Korean War, that the ship was blown up.
