The Hankyoreh — who else! — got their paws on the findings of a team of Russian naval experts who came to Korea to study the sinking of the Cheonan. Not surprisingly, the Russians argue that the Cheonan could have hit a mine:
On Monday, the Hankyoreh acquired a document titled “Data from the Russian Naval Expert Group’s Investigation into the Cause of the South Korean Naval Vessel Cheonan’s Sinking,” in which the Russian team stated, “The explosion time officially stated by South Korea [9:21:58 p.m.] does not coincide with the time of the last video footage taken on the day in question when the power current was cut off within the vessel [9:17:03 p.m.].” This statement hints that an uncontrollable situation may have arisen at least four to five minutes before the time announced by the South Korean team.
[...]
On its conclusions regarding the cause of the sinking, the Russian team wrote, “The claims that it was a non-contact external underwater explosion were borne out.” At the same time, it conjectured that the accident occurred when “the vessel’s propeller happened to get caught in a net as it was sailing through shallow waters near the coast, and as the vessel was trying to extricate itself to deep waters, its lower part struck a [mine] antenna and set off the triggering device.”
Now, far be it for me to ever doubt a team of Russians, but on the off-chance that they’re full of it, what would be in it for them other than to be a pain in the arse?
Oh, and the Hani is calling for — surprise! — a parliamentary re-investigation. Good grief…
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
> Now, far be it for me to ever doubt a team of Russians, but on the off-chance that they’re full of it, what would be in it for them other than to be a pain in the arse?
My question exactly. My understanding was that Russia had pretty much dropped all political support for North Korea. So maybe this really is an honest technical disagreement.
^ What’s in it for the Russians? I thought it was pretty easy to see. Russia simply does everything opposite to America just for the sake of torpedoing America. Russia still dreams that it’s one of the two superpowers in the world. They still need to pretend that the Cold War is still going on. They also have never dropped their support of North Korea, and like China, they also don’t want North Korea collapsed, because they too, don’t want Americans right next door in the neighborhood.
well CM, you just pointed out a practical aspect of their intentions though.
Even if they DON’T view themself as a world super power, and just a regional one, no serious regional power would like to have other percieved power gaining ever more leverage and deployment around their neighborhood.
I was just reading up on all the atrocities Russia is supposed to have bee causing during the last 30 years ( Georgia, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Croatia, Serbia, etc etc etc), they really do like messing around in others affairs.
Calling Dr. Lankov.
We need you to come back to the blog to explain for us once again that Russia’s motive here is not support of NK, or a genuine scientific disagreement, but a basic distrust and disbelief in anything America says or does, and a contrarian desire to through a wrench in America’s works.
In case Dr Lankov doesn’t come back, here is his comment on a previous related thread. It should go some way to answering gwern’s question in commetn #1.
Russkies like stirring the shite. This was a golden opportunity that they couldn’t pass up.
@#5:
With respect to Dr, Lankov, there’s a danger in listening to what people say and taking it too literally – a journalist’s virtue. But, it’s easier to understand that two people, two groups could just see the same piece of real estate and disagree about its value. The rest – the ideology, the history, the culture – is just window dressing. Tallying up the events to calculate the probabilities leads to science; asking why to philosophy. This board mucks around in ideology.
The definitive examination is still waiting for a neutral authority to complete it, probably a hundred years from now when the dust has cleared. It’s just not important, really. The antagonists are going to war anyway, whether they have a Cheonan or a Dokdo is irrelevant. But, if I had to bet, I’d put money down that the ship is a victim of a long list of minor screw-ups by a host of minor players too impotent to come clean in public.
Russia is doubtlessly taking this opportunity to send a message to America. This statement is not about the Cheonan (unfortunately) and all countries in the region understand this. America has sent the Chinese a blunt and surprising message regarding their claims and intentions in the Pacific region, and Russia intends to play the spoiler, much like “hamel” notes in #5.
The Russian Government is not unlike the Chinese; they are both gangsters of the highest aspirations borne upon the poorest justifications.
P.S. Foget the Hankyoreh; they don’t know dead chickens from live ones.
@ Left Flank #8
with due respect to you, your prose can be quite florid, but ultimately it is meaningless, except to say that one should suspend meaning.
Does the fact that the Swedes – who (1) still sit on the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission to monitor the Armistice and (2) have an embassy in Pyongyang – signed on fully and without reservation to the findings of the JIG not mean anything to you?
Are they not neutral enough?
@ hamel #11
Number 1 is a good point. However, is number 2 compelling enough evidence of Sweden’s fair minded neutrality? The Britishers have an embassy in Pyongyang, too.
@#11:
Swedes?! No. I meant peer-reviewed science, not some Cold War stereotype of neutrality in an American media circus. A stringent realism, which is the perspective I start with, is more compelling, in whatever rhetorical form, than any self-contradictory half-baked, re-treaded Wilsonian neo-con fantasies about the value of destruction for building democracy.
Clearly I am lacking in intelligence; the more you type, the less I understand.
Are you aware that the JIG wasn’t just made up of random dudes and dudettes from the countries concerned, but of metallurgical experts, explosives experts, ballistics experts, maritine warfare experts, etc?
@ seouldout:
Actually, I think this aids my point, not detracts from it. I am well aware that the Poms have an embassy in Pyongyang, ever since James Hoare opened it in 2000. I have met a diplomat who was stationed there and now is here.
I think the fact that the British have an embassy there and signed on to the conclusions of the JIG (as well as the Swedes) lends credence to the idea that they are not just going along with some SK Gulf of Tonkin play. It means they saw the evidence, they knew that they were potentially risking their diplomatic relations with NK, but they could draw no other conclusion than that the Norks did it.
And what about the Canucks? Okay they don’t have an embassy up North, but they also went along with the CIG’s conclusion. Now we all know that the Canucks are not the lapdogs of the Americans, sometimes going against US policy quite strongly. Why did they go along with it?
Nothing will convince me that all these nations agreed that NK was responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan just because the Americans and South Koreans wanted them to and because they concocted evidence to suggest it was so.
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