'저는 그들의 땅을 지키기 위하여 싸웠던 인디안들의 이야기를 기억합니다. 백인들이 그들의 신성한 숲에 도로를 만들기 위하여 나무들을 잘랐습니다. 매일밤 인디안들이 나가서 백인들이 만든 그 길을 해체하면 그 다음 날 백인들이 와서 도로를 다시 짓곤 했습니다. 한동안 그 것이 반복되었습니다. 그러던 어느날, 숲에서 가장 큰 나무가 백인들이 일할 동안 그들 머리 위로 떨어져 말과 마차들을 파괴하고 그들 중 몇몇을 죽였습니다. 그러자 백인들은 떠났고 결코 다시 오지 않았습니다….' (브루스 개그논)





For any updates on the struggle against the Jeju naval base, please go to savejejunow.org and facebook no naval base on Jeju. The facebook provides latest updates.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Text Fwd: South Korean government impeded Russian team's Cheonan investigation: Donald Gregg


* Donald P. Gregg, the national security adviser to Vice President George H. W. Bush from 1982 to 1988 and ambassador to Korea from 1989 to 1993, is chairman emeritus of the Korea Society (NYT)
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Hankyoreh
South Korean government impeded Russian team's Cheonan investigation:
:Donald Gregg Former U.S. ambassador to South Korea urges full disclosure of long-delayed report on navy warship's sinking
Posted on : Sep.4,2010
By Kwon Tae-ho, Washington correspondent

WASHINGTON — Current Korea Society chairman and former United States Ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg, who raised doubts about the South Korean government's Cheonan investigation findings in a piece for the International Herald Tribune, claims that the South Korean government impeded an investigation by a Russian team of experts. In a telephone interview with the Hankyoreh on Friday, Gregg said that the South Korean government “must remove all doubts by announcing in detail the findings of the Joint Investigation Group” (JIG). In his International Herald Tribune contribution Wednesday, Gregg wrote that the Russian team "concluded that [the Cheonan's] sinking was more likely due to a mine than to a torpedo."


The following is the text of the interview. Gregg’s responses are taken directly from the interview transcript.


Q: What was the basis for the Russian team reaching that conclusion?

A: Their conclusion was tentative. Because they were not given access to all of the material they wanted to see, and they were not allowed to conduct [simulation] tests.

Q: So doesn't that mean that the Russian team's conclusion was uncertain? How did they reach the determination that it was a mine rather than a torpedo in spite of this?

A: [According to the JIG’s announcement t]he Cheonan sank when it was broken in half all at once by a bubble jet originating from the launching of a torpedo. But, Russia, which is well aware of the situation in North Korea, determined that North Korea didn't access the very high technical weapon to bubble jet, bubble-likely destroy the ship and sink it.

Q: Did the Russian team receive any help from the South Korean government during its investigation?

A: The Russians were frustrated that they couldn't get access to all of the material that they wanted to see, and were not allowed to conduct tests, so they were unable to carry out the investigation. This is also the reason no Chinese investigation team went to South Korea.

Q: Officials with the South Korean government have said off the record that China has not conducted an investigation into the Cheonan because "it doesn't want to know the truth."

A: What I heard from two senior Chinese officials during the past week was that they had been told by Russia that they wouldn't be able to access any information if they went to South Korea, so that there was no need to send an investigation team to Seoul. China took their advice.

Q: Do you also think that the Cheonan's sinking resulted from an accident rather than a North Korean attack?

A: I don't know. But if you look at the situation at the time, North Korea had proposed the third summit, it was preparing U.S.-North Korea talks, and they invited Lee Hee-ho, Kim Dae-jung's widow, to visit Pyongyang. It makes no sense that they would undo all of that by sinking the Cheonan.

Q: Don't you trust the JIG's report?

A: I am not sure. The South Koreans refused to address technical questions raised by the Russian report, and the South Korean [JIG] report has not been made public. They [the Russians] were not allowed to see some material that might have allowed them to criticize the JIG report more strongly. What I fear is that the final defense of the JIG report will be "It's classified information and we cannot tell you about it." So the truth may elude us, as it did after the infamous Tonkin Bay incident of 1964, that was used to drag us into the abyss of the Vietnam War.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]
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You may see also:

New York Times
Op-Ed : Testing North Korean Waters
By DONALD P. GREGG
Published: August 31, 2010

EXCERPTS:
South Korea has not officially referred to the Russian conclusions. When I asked a well-placed Russian friend why the report has not been made public, he replied, “Because it would do much political damage to President Lee Myung-bak and would embarrass President Obama.”

(* Thanks very much, Mr. Lee Haeng-Woo to inform me the article)
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Korea Report
September 1, 2010
"Testing North Korean Waters"

EXCERPTS:

'Unusually, two op-ed articles on Korea appeared in The New York Times on the same day on Aug. 31: neocon Paul Wofowitz's article "In Korea, a Model for Iraq," comparing US troops' role and legacy to that of South Korea appeared in the US edition, and Donald Gregg's piece "Testing North Korean Waters," explaining Cheonan incident and the need for engagement policy was featured in the global edition only.'
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Bruce Gagnon blog, Aug. 30, 2010

Video: SHIP SINKING MYSTERY STILL NOT SOLVED IN KOREA
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[Stop NATO] U.S., South Korea Heighten Tensions In Northeast Asia
Voice of Russia
September 4, 2010
Garibov Konstantin

EXCERPT:

Tension is growing in North-East Asia now that Seoul and Washington are about to
get down to practicing the detection and destruction of North Korea’s sea
targets. The manoeuvres, the second in the last three months, are due in the
Yellow Sea on the 5th through the 9th of September [* postponed due to storm] Pyongyang has described the exercise as a grave military provocation. Beijing says the manoeuvres are a
violent challenge to the situation in the region.

[...]
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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 8, 2010 at 11:41 AM

    To the “outside” world intellectuals who don’t read Korean,

    This is a remarkable story of people – the governed(although they are in theory supposed to be the actual governor in democracy), not their government - making difference in the world (history).

    1. Compare and contrast.
    “More enlightened” American people, Congress and media; Bush; WMD; War (and huge suffering),
    (http://whitehouser.com/war/CIA-confirms-Bush-WMD-lie )
    and,
    “Supposedly less so enlightened” Korean people; Korean President Lee; Cheonan; prevention of War (so far).
    (I am including among ‘the Korean people’ the Korean-Americans.)

    2. Also remarkable is that the “inside” Korean people braved the government prosecution.
    Caveat: Under the current South Korean regime, South Korean citizens can be sued for defamation by their own government officials, and defamation in South Korea is a crime (as well as a civil offense) prosecuted by the government’s own centrally controlled national prosecutors who selectively choose or choose not whom to prosecute.
    Recently, Shin Sang-cheol, “an expert placed on the JIG [Joint Investigation Group] by” the National Assembly, got (criminally) sued for defamation by a government official for expressing disagreement over the current South Korean regime’s version of the Cheonan Incident. (http://www.zimbio.com/Mizuho+Fukushima/articles/BvIMjqn_oLw/South+Korean+Investigation+Team+Member+Mr )

    (South Korean people’s firsthand knowledge about the pro-government polls is that they are ridiculously overinflated.
    A proof: war-fear-mongering South Korean President Lee Myung-bak got unexpectedly humiliated on the June 2 midterm election by the “Supposedly less so enlightened” Korean people,
    when “survey conducted by the major daily [pro-government]Dong-A Ilbo and the Korea Research Center from May 24 to 26[7-days-before] forecast[ed] that Oh would beat Han by 20.8 percent.”
    Actual election result: 0.6 percent(=”47.4 percent”-”46.8 percent.”)
    Source: http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2921960 )

    3. A list of early English publications on Questions on the Cheonan Incident and the Power of South Korean Netizens can be found at http://korea.true.ws (by LetsTry Reason) and newer writings at http://letstryreason.wordpress.com .

    Also, look at: “the U.S, South Korea, the U.K, Canada and Australia, but not Sweden [NOT Sweden], contributed to the second-statement findings [claiming that North Korea might be guilty]” – “Five reasons why the the JIG’s 5-page statement cannot be considered scientific and objective, nor … ‘international’”
    http://japanfocus.org/-JOHN-MCGLYNN/3372 ;
    “Russian Probe Sees No North Korea Hand In Cheonan Sinking! Russia Says Sea Mine Sunk Cheonan”
    http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/russian-probe-sees-no-north-korea-hand-in-cheonan-sinking/ ;
    http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/pcc-772-cheonan-south-korean-government-admits-the-deception-and-then-lies-about-it/ ;
    http://nature.com/news/2010/080710/full/news.2010.343.html ;
    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-korea-torpedo-20100724,0,4196801,full.story

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousSeptember 8, 2010 at 11:46 AM

    4. Compare and contrast.
    9/11; Al-Qaeda; brags We did it(, was not wrong, not sorry about it and we will do it again).
    Cheonan; North Korea; brags We didn’t do it (therefore, presumably, was wrong, sorry about it and we will not do it). (Why the difference?)
    Crime and punishment. If we are taking consequentialist moral philosophy, and if the utilitarian utility of punishment is to prevent future crime, then punishment serves little or no purpose (maybe to others but not)to North Korea who says ‘We didn’t do it,’ because either (a) the North didn’t do it, therefore the punishment will be outrageous injustice,
    or (b) the North did do it, but ‘We didn’t do it’ basically implies ‘We will not do it.’
    (This particular ‘it’ hardly gives the North any payoff.)
    *If you don’t get scared of us, how can We become the terrorist, and if you don’t know We did it, how can you get scared of us?

    5. Representative democracy is not pure democracy. (Pure)Direct democracy of a nation-size is now (or becoming) possible, through recent developments in computer science and technology, making secure private Internet-voting, democratic online discussions, cheap instantaneous micro referendum and freedom of choice to vote directly on an issue or use an agent possible.
    The science (computer science) should finally make the people, the governed, the actual de facto governor in democracy.

    6. I take this honor of hereby formally asking the folks in Norway to consider awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to the “Supposedly less so enlightened” Korean people including myself,
    who in early days, among various activities, proposed the “outside” world contact initiative for the Cheonan peace, providing email addresses of all the foreign embassies in Korea, U.N., Hillary, Obama, and the foreign media.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousSeptember 8, 2010 at 11:47 AM

    Conspiracy theory?

    That's begging the question, petitio principii. Is it "conspiracy theory"? Is it outlandishly false? Have you proven that?

    Is it "held by a person judged to be a crank or a group confined to the lunatic fringe," such as(?) the aforementioned physicist and professor in the American universities, and the millions and millions of South Korean and Korean-American citizens?

    Were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post conspiracy theorists too?

    Maybe a false analogy.
    Rather, it may be
    "it certainly has echoes of conspiracy theories like those surrounding the 1972 Watergate Break-in of President Richard M. Nixon."


    The comparison to the Warren Commission seems absurd.
    Maybe a false analogy, once again.

    The South Korean JIG(Joint Investigation Group) was no Warren Commission.
    The JIG's chairman was not the Chief Justice
    of South Korea.
    The JIG's members were not at all filled with the South Korean National Assembly Members and legal counsels like the Warren Commission was.

    ReplyDelete

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