 A group of family members of a missing Navy sailor who was aboard the 1,200-ton warship Cheonan when it sunk shed tears at a naval base in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, Saturday. / Korea Times |
By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
Government officials said Sunday that the cause of the sinking of the ship Cheonan has yet to be determined.
The authorities have played down a North Korean involvement in the incident, but some military officials and experts as well as survivors argue that an outside impact, not an accidental explosion inside, could have caused the deadly incident.
The area in which the patrol boat sank has been a hot zone for inter-Korean naval skirmishes for several years.
In January, patrol vessels from both Koreas exchanged gunfire, following a similar exchange in November in which a North Korean vessel was severely damaged and a North Korean sailor was killed.
The North Korean military threatened to retaliate.
Against that backdrop, a torpedo from a North Korean submarine might have hit the Cheonan, some insist.
"Given the alleged huge impact that destroyed the 1,200-ton ship, a torpedo attack would be a possible cause," an expert at the state-funded Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA) said.
"But there is doubt over why the Cheonan sailors failed to detect the signs of an attack in advance with the radar and detection systems of the ship."
A North Korean submarine might have turned off its engine and launched a torpedo against the Cheonan, the researcher said.
Military authorities did not rule out the possibility of the ill-fated ship having been hit by a sea mine planted by North Korea.
"An acoustic mine might have hit the ship's screws. That's just one possibility among others," a Navy official said. Acoustic mines are activated by the noise of ship's screws.
But other officials downplayed the possibility, saying North Korea has never used mines in the West Sea.
It is possible that the North Korean regime ordered the attack in order to provoke the South, but the attack may instead have been launched by lower-level local commanders.
"If the sinking of the Cheonan was due to an attack, it will pose a serious threat to security on the Korean Peninsula and neighboring countries, and the United States," the KIDA researcher said.
Some raise the possibility of the ship's collision with a rock. But it was unlikely, according to the Navy, because patrol ships had conducted operations routinely but had not seen rocks in the area.
The last scenario is an explosion in the ship's petrol tank or a blast due to a malfunction of explosives, such as anti-submarine bombs the ship was carrying.
gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr
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