We Didn't Sink The Cheonan! (Honestly...!)

Having been given the benefit of the doubt in the Cheonan sinking by the United Nations, North Korea's propaganda posters now appear to be bragging about sinking the vessel. According to the Joongang Daily, the poster of a soldier smashing a corvette (the same class of ship as the Cheonan) bearing the message "Ready to crush any attack with a single blow!" was photographed by a Chinese businessman.

According to Radio Free Asia:

The businessman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that high-ranking North Korean traders he dealt with “expressed self-esteem in relation to North Korea’s military strength” and told him, “regardless of U.N. sanctions, we [North Koreans have] never stopped reacting.”

“It’s hard to understand how high-ranking officials can adamantly deny North Korea’s responsibility for the sinking of the Cheonan while propaganda posters showing a ship being broken in half by a fist are in circulation,” he said.

Update: I am currently reading B R Myers' The Cleanest Race and this propaganda poster, if genuine, is a perfectly good illustration of one of his main points in the book. Up until now, North Korea's stance on the Cheonan issue has been to cry foul at the hostile Yankees and their South Korean puppets for conspiring to blame them for something they had nothing to do with. Korean Central News Agency even collated their own articles in a special section here. And when their Foreign Minister spoke about the incident following the United Nations' absolution of the North from any blame he said: The recent development in which the overall situation on the Korean Peninsula reached a point of explosion in a moment due to a conspiratorial farce once again reminds us of the danger of the present cease-fire and the urgency to establish a peace-keeping regime. The DPRK will make consistent efforts for the conclusion of a peace treaty and the denuclearization through the six-party talks conducted on equal footing.

However, B R Myers warns:

Too many observers wrongly assume that the (North) Korean Central News Agency's English-language releases reflect the same sort of propaganda that the home audience gets. In fact there are significant differences. For example, there the DPRK presents itself to the outside world as a misunderstood country seeking integration into the international community, it presents itself to its own citizens... as a rogue state that breaks agreements with impunity, dictates conditions to grovelling U.N. officials, and keeps its enemies in constant fear of ballistic retribution. Generally speaking the following rule of thumb applies: the less accessible a propaganda outlet is to the outside world, the blunter and more belligerent it will be in its expression of the racist orthodoxy.

In this case, the poster doesn't depict anything that could be called racist but the rest of Myers' analysis of North Korean propaganda seems to fit this episode to a tee.

Cheonan Controversy

North Korea has hailed as a "victory" a UN Security Council statement that condemns the sinking of a South Korean warship but avoids blaming Pyongyang.

BBC

The Korean Central News Agency gives the DPRK's official response:

FM Spokesman on Presidential Statement of UNSC on "Cheonan" Case
Pyongyang, July 10 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry on Saturday gave the following answer to the question raised by KCNA as regards the issue of the presidential statement of the United Nations Security Council on the "Cheonan" case:

The south Korean authorities brought up the case for discussion at the UNSC, but it concluded the discussion on this issue by issuing its presidential statement devoid of any proper judgment and conclusion without adopting any resolution on it.


A particular mention should be made of the fact that the UNSC took heed of the reactions of the countries concerned including the DPRK which clarified that it had nothing to do with the case.


The discussion could not have ended up otherwise as the UNSC hastily tabled and handled the case before the truth of the case has been probed.


This clearly proves what a foolish calculation the U.S. and south Korea made when they were recklessly behaving in so great haste to do harm to the DPRK for no reason.


We take note of the presidential statement saying that "the Security Council encourages the settlement of outstanding issues on the Korean Peninsula by peaceful means to resume direct dialogue and negotiation through appropriate channels."


The "Cheonan" case should have been settled between the north and the south without referring it to the UN.


The DPRK remains unchanged in its stand to probe the truth about the case to the last.


The south Korean authorities should strictly preserve the scene of the incident including the state of seabed as they were till the inspection team of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK reaches there.


The recent development in which the overall situation on the Korean Peninsula reached a point of explosion in a moment due to a conspiratorial farce once again reminds us of the danger of the present cease-fire and the urgency to establish a peace-keeping regime.


The DPRK will make consistent efforts for the conclusion of a peace treaty and the denuclearization through the six-party talks conducted on equal footing.


If the hostile forces persist in such provocations as demonstration of forces and sanctions in contravention of the presidential statement which calls for "avoiding conflicts and averting escalation" on the Korean Peninsula, they will neither be able to escape the DPRK's strong physical retaliation nor will be able to evade the responsibility for the resultant escalation of the conflict.

KCNA

And Nature magazine has an article in which it airs the conspiracy theories over the sinking of the Cheonan.

Kim Hyun Hee on the Cheonan

Kim Hyun Hee, believes that Kim Jong-il ordered the Cheonan sinking.

Story here.

Andrei Lankov Predicts Russia's Verdict on the Cheonan Sinking...

Speculation is high as a team of Russian experts, sent to South Korea to review the findings of the multinational investigation into the [sinking of the Cheonan] incident, returned home Monday to report to Moscow, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

But regardless of what its experts determine, a prominent North Korea expert here expects Russia to avoid taking a firm stance on the findings, as it has too much to lose by supporting either side...


..."It might have indeed been North Korea," [Lankov] said, taking the voice of the Russian government. "But the evidence is not sufficient and so it is better not to jump to conclusions and drive tensions higher. Let's forget about this unfortunate incident as soon as possible."



Korea Times

Essentially, Andrei Lankov believes Russia has nothing to gain by concluding too firmly whether or not they agree with the international investigation's conclusion into the sinking of the Cheonan.

B R Myers on the sinking of the Cheonan

NRO

Friendly Fire?

A no-doubt spontaneous rally in Pyongyang against the Yankee Imperialist Aggressors

Sunday, May 30th saw a big demonstration against the findings of the international investigation that blamed North Korea for the sinking of the Cheonan.

South of the border, there is also a high degree of skepticism that North Korea were responsible for the Cheonan's sinking. According to Bloomberg:

Prime Minister Chung Un Chan ordered the government to find a way to stop groundless rumors spreading on the Cheonan’s sinking, the JoongAng Daily said yesterday. Prosecutors questioned a former member of the panel that probed the incident over his critical comments, the paper said. The Joint Chiefs of Staff sued a lawmaker for defamation after she said video footage of the ship splitting apart existed, a claim the military denies, Yonhap News reported.

Almost one in four South Koreans say they don’t trust the findings of the multinational panel, according to a poll commissioned by Hankook Ilbo on May 24. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency yesterday accused the South’s “puppet military of trying to cover up the truth about the sinking” by seeking to silence opposition lawmakers with the lawsuit.

Indeed, North Korea's Defence Commission held a press conference in which they brought up what they see as inconsistencies in the report...

The Press Conference is reported, in typically temperate North Korean rhetoric, here.

But while North Korea are furiously denouncing those who blame them for the sinking of the Cheonan and it is reported that many in South Korea don't believe the official report, B R Myers points out that anger towards North Korea is quite limited in South Korea. He points out that anti-American protests in the past have far surpassed the anger levelled at North Korea right now:

This urge to give the North Koreans the benefit of the doubt is in marked contrast to the public fury that erupted after the killings of two South Korean schoolgirls by an American military vehicle in 2002; it was widely claimed that the Yankees murdered them callously. During the street protests against American beef imports in the wake of a mad cow disease scare in 2008, posters of a child-poisoning Uncle Sam were all the rage. It is illuminating to compare those two anti-American frenzies with the small and geriatric protests against Pyongyang that have taken place in Seoul in recent weeks.

Now, this is something that could lead a conspiracy theorist to wondering whether or not the sinking of the Cheonan by the North Koreans is a cover for the possibility of a "friendly fire" incident by the United States. It is quite clear that should the United States have sank the Cheonan instead of the North Koreans then the outrage would indeed be spontaneous and stronger than that of the anti-North Korean protests right now.

One of the proponents of this view is Kim Myong Chol, who is an "unofficial" spokesperson for North Korea who lives in Japan.

Kim Myong-Chol has argued that it is impossible for the Cheonan to have been attacked unawares by a torpedo from a North Korean submarine given that the Cheonan was on naval maneouvres at the time and one of its main jobs was to detect submarines and other enemy vessels. This is a repeat of what he had asserted before, here.

Of course, what he has to say on the incident should be taken with a pinch of salt given that he then goes on to threaten:

The Korean People's Army has been put on combat readiness. Supreme Commander Kim Jong-il is one click away from turning Seoul, Tokyo and New York into a sea of fire with a fleet of nuclear-tipped North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles.


But, I'd be interested to know what anyone has to say about his accusations...

How Inconvenient!

This picture, which appears at the Foreign Policy blog purports to show a piece of the torpedo which sank the Cheonan diplaying the Hangul script. I'm dismissive of conspiracy theories that claim the evidence is fabricated or of those who react to the discovery of Korean script on the torpedo with, "How convenient!" simply because it is in no way convenient to South Korea or any of the other countries that sent its experts to be part of the international investigation such as the US, UK, Australia and Sweden.

The DPRK has offered to send its own investigators:

The Democratic People's Republic Korea (DPRK) on Saturday urged South Korea to receive an inspection group to be dispatched by the National Defense Commission (NDC) of the DPRK to verify evidence related to the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, the official KCNA news agency reported.


But they have been refused:

According to the KCNA, Seoul's rejection of the DPRK inspectors "can not be construed otherwise than a move to prevent the true nature of its conspiratorial farce and charade from being brought to light."


The South Korean side has already given its reasons for rejecting this delegation no doubt seeing the murder of 46 of its seamen to be humiliation enough:

But South Korean Defence Minister Kim Tae-Young on Friday rejected the North's demand as "outrageous", saying it would be "like a robber or a murderer insisting he must inspect the crime scene".

South Korea said Friday the North should instead attend military talks with the US-led United Nations Command (UNC) after the command wraps up its investigation to review the findings of the investigation and determine the scope of armistice violation that occurred in the sinking.


It seems that it could also be inconvenient for North Korea in this final straw will be the end of the "Sunshine policy" of engagement with North Korea.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial insists that Kim Jong-il's regime no longer be seen as legitimate:

The larger strategic insight is to recognize that North Korea won't change until Kim dies or his regime falls. The goal of the West should be to increase pressure on the North toward the latter goal, especially given signs of increasing discontent in the North...

...The [US] Administration could also announce that its "future vision" is for a united and democratic Korea, similar to the united and democratic Germany that Mr. Obama celebrated in his famous Berlin speech. Supporters of engagement will decry this as provocative, but it will put the North on notice that the U.S. no longer accepts its legitimacy as a given.

Peace-Loving DPRK Misunderstood Again

The Peace-loving DPRK

North Korea's official news agency, KCNA, reports that the kum-ba-yah-esque Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea has issued a "What? Me?" response to the South Korean investigation that concluded the Cheonan had been destroyed by a North Korean torpedo:

I will publish it in its entirety here:

Pyongyang, May 21 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) issued a statement on Friday assailing the south Korean puppet forces for releasing extremely provocative "results of the investigation" into the sinking of a warship of the south Korean puppet navy in a bid to hurl mud at the north.

The statement noted that the publication of the above-said "results of the investigation" is another extremely ridiculous charade staged by the puppet group in a bid to hurt the dignity of the DPRK, steadily tighten the "sanctions" against it, harm and suffocate it in conspiracy with its U.S. and Japanese masters, much upset by the might of the Republic advancing by leaps and bounds toward a thriving nation.


The Lee Myung Bak group, while working with bloodshot eyes to escalate confrontation with fellow countrymen, drew the conclusion from the day the case occurred that the warship was "sunken by the north" and has since conducted intensive investigation on its basis to hatch a plot, the statement said, and went on:


In the course of nearly two month-long investigation the puppet group fabricated what it called "circumstantial evidence" with conjecture, supposition and random guess. It just produced fragments and pieces of aluminum whose origin remains unknown as "evidence," becoming the target of derision.


Greatly irony is that it deliberately linked the case with the north, talking about the results of the analysis of composition of the unidentified "evidence" without any marking and its size and type.


This is nothing but a shameful deed of those keen on escalating the confrontation with the north.


The Lee group's assertion that the above-said case is linked with the north is the last-ditch effort of those who face destruction as it is a premeditated and deliberate plot to tide over a serious crisis created due to the total failure of its domestic and foreign policies and smoothly stage the "elections to the local self-governing bodies" in a bid to maintain the fascist rule and bring the inter-Korean relations to a collapse.


The puppet forces are now kicking up such fuss as creating atmosphere reminiscent of a wartime situation in south Korea, blustering they would not "rule out a war" and crying out for "counter-measures", urgently evacuating the personnel, equipment and materials of the south side from the areas of the north side and issuing top secret order for taking steps for personal safety and making preparations for withdrawal.


This racket reminding one of an eve of a war goes to prove that the group's recent publication of the "results of investigation" was not a mere clarification of the sinking of the warship but a carefully calculated provocation to seek a pretext for igniting a war of aggression against the north together with outside forces.


The puppet group has created such grave situation on the Korean Peninsula that a war may break out right now.


Pursuant to the statement issued by a spokesman for the National Defence Commission, the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea solemnly declares as follows, speaking for the DPRK government authorities:


Firstly, from now on the DPRK will regard the present situation as the phase of a war and decisively handle all matters arising in the inter-Korean relations to cope with it.


Secondly, in case the puppet group opts for "counter-action" and "retaliation" under the pretext of the sinking of the warship, the DPRK will strongly react to them with such merciless punishment as the total freeze of the inter-Korean relations, the complete abrogation of the north-south agreement on non-aggression and a total halt to the inter-Korean cooperation undertakings.


The DPRK will never pardon anyone hurting its supreme dignity and doing harm to it, warned the statement.


Source: KCNA

North Korea Blamed For the Cheonan Sinking!

North Korea has officially been blamed for the sinking of South Korea's Cheonan naval vessel after an international investigation. I had said before that it sounded a little like the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898. However, this one now seems to be the reverse as the USS Maine was initially believed to have been deliberately sunk and later found to be an accident whereas the Cheonan was initially believed to have been an accident and later declared deliberate.

One of the pieces of evidence was the fact that a serial number from a torpedo was discovered on some of the shrapnel from the blast as the Korean Times says here:

Korea has found a serial number marked on fragments of torpedo propeller collected from the scene where the petrol ship Chonan of the navy sank in March, Yonhap News reported Wednesday.

The number was written in a font used in North Korea, and investigators have concluded that the 1,200-ton corvette came under a North Korean torpedo attack near the West Sea border on March 26 before breaking in half and sinking, Yonhap quoted officials in Seoul said.

Foreign experts from the United States, Britain and Australia working as part of an international team have also agreed to the assessment that a torpedo attack sank the Cheonan, officials said.

One blog that appears to have been correct from the start is One Free Korea which originally featured this post very shortly after the first part of the wreck was salvaged.

But also, while I was being tongue-in-cheek in a previous post on Kim Jong-il's trip to China about the meaning of "frank exchange of views" between China and North Korea, I can't help wondering whether or not Kim Jong-il actually was given a dressing down by Hu Jintao or at least made to explain whether North Korea were behind the sinking of the Cheonan.

Of course, naval border skirmishes between the navies of the two Koreas are not rare, but if this is the modern version of the USS Maine then it doesn't bode well for the future.

Explosion Sinking South Korean Warship May Have Killed Many: Cause Unknown

One Free Korea has a post up about the mysterious explosion aboard a South Korean vessel around the disputed "maritime border" of North and South Korea.

The writer of the piece believes that an external explosion cannot be ruled out and yet it sounds quite a lot like the USS Maine incident, which I've written a few blogposts on before, and which was more likely an accident.

According to the BBC, South Korean divers have made it to the wreckage of the Cheonan but haven't heard any signs of life coming from within where over 40 crewmembers may have perished.

The speculation seems to be that it was either an accident or possibly a drifting mine - possibly laid by North Korea and never retrieved. But there aren't any "Remember the Cheonan, To Hell with Pyongyang!" headlines yet.

No word on that apparently from North Korea's KCNA who instead have a stirring story about new propaganda posters that have just been produced:

Pyongyang, March 28 (KCNA) -- New posters were produced to encourage all the servicepersons and people in their great drive to build a great prosperous and powerful nation in hearty response to the joint editorial this year and the joint calls of the Central Committee and the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party of Korea.

The poster "Every effort for the construction of the Huichon Power Station!" created by the Workers' Party of Korea Publishing House depicted with simple and distinct stroke the heroic spirit of the builders of the power station, their hearts burning with the fixed faith that when the Party is determined, we can do anything.


The poster ardently calls on the whole party and army and all people to come out as one and dash ahead at "the Huichon speed," a new Chollima speed to contribute to hastening the construction of the power station and solving the shortage of electricity.


Among the new posters are the posters "We farmers are responsible for agriculture!", "Let's carry out rice-transplantation effectively in the right season!" and "Let the whole party and state and all people give strong help to the countryside!"


These posters show agricultural workers working hard in a vast cooperative field, keenly aware of their mission to make a main contribution to improving the people's standard of living, tractors carrying manure to fields, trucks transporting farm materials and helpers of farms. They vigorously arouse all the working people to the drive for implementing the Party's policy of agricultural revolution.

Also, B.R Myers has an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal suggesting that while it might not be the end of the world in 2012, it could be the end of the Kim regime.

Thanks to Greywolf for the heads-up on the article.

Some useless idiots give their support to the DPRK by picketing the US and "running-dog south Korean" embassies in London!