Cheonan Incident: Is the Truth Coming Out?

In previous posts I made it clear that I do not believe the "official story" that North Korea sunk the naval ship in Cheonan. You can read what I wrote about it here and here.

Well today, yesterday (August 23) the Korean news is full of questionable information. Apparently a naval rescue officer / Coast Guard officer has come forward as a witness and questions the official report. Unfortunately there seems to be nothing about this in the English news, and my Korean ability is far too limited to give an accurate report. Nonetheless, as far as I can understand it, this man was the first person to hear the S.O.S. call from the ship immediately after the incident. And from his testimony it doesn't seem to have been a missile attack as reported. Instead the S.O.S. call stated that the ship had struck a reef.

There are a number of things that we have to question.

First, the silliness of the official report. According to the official report we are asked to believe that one of the world's most decrepit little countries with their outdated military equipment sent a submarine to sneak up on a South Korean naval ship, fire a single outdated missile at it, that practically ripped the ship in half and sink it, and then sneaked away again, without the South Korean Navy nor the United States Navy (which happened to be there) noticing the enemy coming or going.

No, a much more plausible story is that this was a South Korean and USA navy exercise that went wrong.

Furthermore, the testimony of the naval rescue officer brings another strange question to light. Why was the sunken ship not discovered until--what was it?--three days later? The first thing one does during an S.O.S. call is to state your coordinates. Why did it take them three days to discover the sunken ship when a simple G.P.S. device could pinpoint it practically immediately. Was the delay in part to cover something up? I cannot help but to think this to be the case.

Then there is also the questions about the compensation received by the deceased's family. There is usually a fixed rate payable by the military to the family of soldiers that are killed while serving in the military. But rumour has it that family members of these soldiers got more money than usual and some of them got work at some of the gigantic companies, like Samsung. This smells terribly fishy to me.

I hope the English news catch up tomorrow, so that I can get a better understanding of the truths coming to light. Unfortunately, news in Korea is not objective, whether it is in Korean or English.