By Lee Tae-hoon
The nation will observe the 2nd anniversary of the sinking of the Cheonan, Monday. The 1,200-ton South Korean frigate split into two after an explosion and sank near the tense maritime border with North Korea in the West Sea.
“If Jeong-hoon were still alive, today would mark one year since being discharged from mandatory military service,” said Lee Yoen-hwa, mother of the late Petty Officer 2nd Class Park Jeong-hoon, one of 46 crewmembers killed when the ship exploded on March 26, 2010.
Of 104 crewmembers aboard the Cheonan, only 58 were rescued.
Lee said the death of her son has completely changed her life. She has been experiencing short-term memory loss, a symptom of post-traumatic stress syndrome, and bursts into tears whenever she sees young men of her son’s age on the streets.
What allowed her to withstand the loneliness and sense of purposeless over the past two years was the genuine consolation that people offered to her, according to Lee.
A recent poll by Media Research, however, indicates that a growing number of people are questioning Lee’s belief that the 46 sailors of the Cheonan, including her son, lost their lives due to a North Korean surprise attack.
The survey of 700 people found that 71.3 percent of the respondents trust the government’s announcement that the Cheonan was attacked by a North Korean submarine, down from 80 percent shown in a survey conducted a year ago by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
Distrust was so high among young adults that only 55.8 percent of respondents in their 20s and 30s said they trust the government’s findings.
Observers say the decline is attributed to conspiracy theories circulating among young people on the Internet and social media that the Cheonan may have hit a mine laid by the South Korean military or collided with a U.S. submarine.
Some doubters even suspect that the warship may have been torn apart due to metal fatigue fractures as a result of poor maintenance.
Scientists, including Lee Seung-hun, a physics professor at the University of Virginia, still question the credibility of the probe results by the Seoul-led multinational investigation team.
“I’m not saying that the North was not responsible for the attack,” he said in an email interview. “But the ink mark of ‘1 beon’ (No. 1) scrawled (on the propeller shaft of the retrieved torpedo near the site of the Cheonan sinking) is not substantial evidence.”
He claims that it would have been impossible for the ink mark to survive unscratched as the paint should have been all burned if there was an explosion to wreck the Cheonan.
Retired Brigadier Gen. Yoon Jong-sung, who headed the joint probe, flatly denied any suspicion over the results published by the investigation team, saying, “The cause of the sinking was clear and this will not change even if another investigation is carried out.”
“It will take some more time to verify certain allegations that scientists have raised against the government’s probe results, but all scientific conclusions will show that our analysis was right and the evidence is irrefutable,” Yoon said.
Meanwhile, experts say that South Korea remains highly vulnerable to Pyongyang’s sophisticated and elaborate underwater attacks, as detecting small North Korean submarines remains a challenge.
The MND pledged to upgrade sonar suites on the Navy’s frigates and corvettes, but the Navy is still using the same outdated anti-torpedo acoustic countermeasure system that the Cheonan had.
This is because installing new sonar could upset the trim of the warships and would cost as much as building a warship.