Families seek answers after sinking of South Korean warship

Times Online ^ | March 28, 2010 | Michael Sheridan and Andrew Salmon

[myknowledge]

SPECIALIST frogmen are to dive to the wreck of a South Korean frigate sunk by a mysterious explosion as the country’s rattled government tries to find out why the vessel was lost.

The 1,200-tonne warship Cheonan went down amid a string of islands in waters bitterly contested by North Korea. But security officials in Seoul, the South Korean capital, said there was no evidence that the North was to blame.

Financial markets shook when the news first reached the United States, which deploys more than 70,000 military personnel plus large air and sea forces to protect South Korea and Japan from aggression.

However, the State Department in Washington urged caution, despite a stream of strident rhetoric from North Korea’s propaganda machine in the past week. “The navy of the US imperialist aggressor forces and the South Korean puppet navy are busy staging combined naval manoeuvres,” Pyongyang said. “The war hysteria ... has reached an extremely reckless phase.”

[myknowledge]

The 1,200-ton Cheonan went down in bitterly contested waters on Friday.

I'd bet it was a Japanese naval mine laid in World War II that sunk the ROKS Cheonan.

[GeronL]

If it was a ROK mine, the gov is gonna need a scapegoat

[Columbia]

Hmmmm.. I don’t see the lame stream media covering this. Must be covering for 0bama.

[omega4179]

I think it was somebodie’s mine. Remember the Maine!

[GregB]

My money is on North Korea...obama will say the boat got in the way of a North Korean torpedo and he will demand South Korea pay for it...

[Viking2002]

Yeah, I hear ya. They say that water is so laden with Nork mines, unexploded war ordnance, and all other manner of hazards, that fish will walk by on land before they'll swim through it. The one big hole (pun somewhat intended) in this episode is the explanation that they were firing at a flock of birds beforehand. Radar operators are trained to filter out that sort of thing. It won't surprise me if they conclude that the Norks baited them into a trap they had set up for any vessel that could get drawn in from afar.

[Hillbillary]

Groundhog's day, everyday in Korea.

[Jet Jaguar]

Ping.

[dtrpscout]

Naaa..’probably just a bad barrel of kimchi.

[Viking2002]

I almost married a Chinese girl way back when, and I can tell you that some of the regional cuisine that Asians partake of - and I don't mean what's on the carry-out menus they hand out to ol' Round Eyes like us - very well could take down a ship. Some of that kimchi should be declared a WMD. I can just picture a machinist's mate lighting up a butt next to some poor SOB who just cracked open a jar of that stuff. *BA-BOOM*!!!!!

[Viking2002]

Come to think of it, I may have just solved the 1908 Tunguska Event. LOL!

[AmericanInTokyo]

Kimchi is devastating no doubt, if you are the one not eating it, however i will swear by it in terms of keeping colds and flus at bay....it even was a great deterrent to the avian flu in Asia a few years ago. Very volatile stuff. thats why they have those special (chlorophyl? mint?) pills you can swallow afterward which go right into the stomach and neutralize any of the garlic odors of that stuff on contact. mouthwash and toothpaste just does NOT cut it after “kimchi”. God bless them Koreans ;-)

[Viking2002]

I keep bottles of hot sauce that'll sweat that bug right out of ya. Anything that's 50,000+ Scoville units will either flush it our of your system, or you'll be in too much agony to worry about what else is crawling around inside your digestive tract. LOL