The sinking of South Korean Corvette Cheonan

Ex-North Korean agent believes North ordered ship sinking
Posted: 23 June 2010 1022 hrs

SEOUL: A former North Korean agent -- who claimed she bombed a South Korean airliner in 1987 on orders from Kim Jong-Il -- says she believes the North's leader also ordered the sinking of a South Korean warship.

Kim Hyun-Hee, who was sentenced to death but later pardoned for her role in blowing up the plane with the loss of 115 lives, was quoted by the Monthly Chosun, a magazine published by Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

"No big incidents like this can happen without informing Kim Jong-Il," the ex-agent, who now lives under guard in South Korea, was quoted as saying.

"Although the planning and preparation would have been done by the military, final confirmation must come from Kim."

Crosss-border tensions have risen sharply since the South -- citing the findings of a multinational investigation -- accused its neighbour of torpedoing the warship in March with the loss of 46 lives.

The North, which denies involvement, has threatened military retaliation if the UN Security Council censures it over the veas Seoul wants.

Kim said people who refuse to accept the investigation results are "afraid of the truth that North Korea did it, and they just don't like it".

She said the North still denies involvement in the bombing of the Korean Air flight in 1987.

"It thinks constantly denying something will make it go away. The Cheonan (warship) sinking made me realise that North Korean strategy hasn't changed."

The former agent said the North detonated the plane bomb when the flight was over the ocean to destroy the evidence.

"Trying to drop the plane into the deep sea to erase all the traces, and trying to destroy all the evidence by attacking a submarine with a torpedo... it's all the same."

The South, she said, "should take a hardline policy against terrorists to prevent these things from happening again".

The plane was en route from Baghdad to Seoul via Bangkok when it blew up over the Andaman Sea.

Two North Korean agents had boarded in Baghdad and got off during a stopover in the Gulf after leaving a time bomb in an overhead compartment. They were arrested when they tried to leave Bahrain using fake Japanese passports.

Both immediately swallowed cyanide capsules. The man died almost instantly but Kim survived.

She was brought to Seoul, where she confessed and alleged that Kim Jong-Il had personally overseen her mission.

After her reprieve, Kim published a book entitled "Tears of My Soul" describing her training at a North Korean spy school. She donated the proceeds to families of victims of the bombing.

She married one of her security guards and is now in her late 40s. - AFP/jy

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From Publishers Weekly
On November 29, 1987, two North Koreans were arrested in Bahrain, suspected of the terrorist bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 in which 115 people died. One of the suspects committed suicide on the spot; the other, the author of this memoir, swallowed poison but survived. Extradited to Seoul, Hyun Hee confessed, was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. The court later granted a full pardon, ruling that she was not the true culprit in the bombing but an innocent victim of North Korean indoctrination. Here Hyun Hee reveals how she was recruited and trained, and provides details of the bombing. Her depiction of North Korea's Orwellian society is convincing and vivid: it is a world where children patrol the streets and report the slightest ideological infraction and where a citizen speaking disrespectfully of "Beloved Leader" Kim Il Sung can be summarily bludgeoned to death. Also affecting are Hyun Hee's comments about the culture shock she experienced in Seoul and her search for redemption through Christianity. This is a chilling account of brainwashing and subsequent deprogramming. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Daughter of a senior North Korean official, Hee was trained as a covert-operations expert from age 19. Her career ended with her 1987 arrest for placing the bomb that caused the deaths of 115 aboard a South Korean airliner. Subsequently tried and sentenced to death, she was pardoned because the "real criminals" were in North Korea, and she was allowed to settle in South Korea. With this kind of memoir, there are always doubts about its authenticity as well as about how much translation and editing (neither a translator nor an editor is credited in prepublication proofs) may have altered even a genuine account. Making allowances for such doubts, however, one finds here an absorbing and moving tale that strongly suggests that North Korea, one of the world's last Stalinist dictatorships, is not going to die easily or without danger to the rest of the world. Roland Green

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U.S. debates joining S. Korean military exercises

By John Pomfret
Saturday, June 19, 2010

The Obama administration is wrestling over whether to send an aircraft carrier to take part in military exercises with South Korea in what would amount to a significant show of force after the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship in March.
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U.S. conflicted on joining S. Korean military exercise

The back-and-forth over the USS George Washington reflects the precarious security situation in Northeast Asia after North Korea's sinking of the Cheonan on March 26. It underscores a huge issue facing U.S. and South Korean officials: how to stop North Korea, which is believed to possess nuclear weapons, from conducting conventional attacks such as the torpedoing of the Cheonan.

Some within the administration are arguing that dispatching the 97,000-ton carrier to the Yellow Sea off the Korean Peninsula, where the Cheonan was sunk, could anger China or cause North Korea to react violently, according to officials involved in the discussions. Others say the United States needs to send a clear message to its allies and to North Korea and China that the United States is standing firmly behind the South.

"It's a very tough call," said Susan Shirk, a former State Department official and an expert on Asian security at the University of California at San Diego. "You don't want to be too proactive. But you need to send a clear message."
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Reports that the United States would send the aircraft carrier battle group surfaced in early June after Washington and Seoul decided to conduct more intensive joint military exercises in response to the attack, which killed 46 South Korean sailors.

On Friday, the Korea Times repeated earlier reports that the George Washington was being sent, citing an unidentified official at the Ministry of Defense. A Pentagon spokesman said no decision had been made.

"I think it's a question of the U.S. and South Korea working out what we want to do together and when we want to do it," said a senior administration official. And as for China, he said, "we'll make sure that they're not surprised."

An international team of experts assembled by South Korea amassed overwhelming evidence that a North Korean mini-submarine sank the Cheonan with a torpedo.

South Korea has since pushed the U.N. Security Council to take up the issue, has cut most ties to North Korea and has sought support from its neighbors to punish Pyongyang.

Still, Evan A. Feigenbaum, a former State Department official now at the Council on Foreign Relations, said North Korea has faced few consequences for its actions.

South Korea has received strong backing from Japan, but China has been cool to its entreaties. China waited almost a month to offer condolences after the deaths aboard the Cheonan and has yet to accept the contents of the report. North Korea has denied involvement in the incident.

China's state-run press has also reacted badly to reports that the United States was considering dispatching the aircraft carrier to the Yellow Sea.

"Having a U.S. aircraft carrier participating in joint military drills off of China's coast would certainly be a provocative action toward China," warned the Global Times, an English-language newspaper run by the Communist Party's mouthpiece, the People's Daily.

Shirk and others said they back sending the aircraft battle group.

"Our commitment to the region is always in question because we're the outside power," Shirk said. Add to that the appearance that China's economy has recovered quickly while unemployment is still high in the United States. "It just reinforces doubts about our ability to deliver," she said.

"But it's dangerous," she acknowledged. "I would send it but not say anything about it. I wouldn't make some big muscular statement. I would just say, 'This is normal.' "

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siegecrossbow said:

The problem- China isn't gonna be happy about U.S. Carriers in her backyard:

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bladerunner said:

... besides it would give the pro carrier faction in the PLA navy a boost for their cause.

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Scratch said:

An unwanted carrier group close to chinese waters. Wouldn't that rather fall into the area denial camp wich should favour ASBM and Subs? Or would PLAN really want to fight a CSBG with a CSBG?
To me, a situation more expeditionary in nature would be something I'd see as giving the CV faction a cause.

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bladerunner said:

It is international waters, besides it would give the pro carrier faction in the PLA navy a boost for their cause.

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Pointblank said:

The problem is that the Americans are adept at hiding carrier groups from the better equipped Soviets who had satellites, recon aircraft, submarines, surface ships, etc, to the point of operating just off the coast conducting mirror image bombing runs at Soviet bases completely undetected. By the time the Soviets realized that a US carrier group was nearby, had it been a real war, they would be picking themselves out of a possibility radioactive rubble of their bases. The Chinese would need something similar to the Soviet Naval Aviation strike and recon regiment system in order to have a hope in finding a carrier group, then trying to engage it. But then again, that's a different story.

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Scratch said:

To me, a situation more expeditionary in nature would be something I'd see as giving the CV faction a cause.

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That said the carrier fleet is still uncomfortably close to the "heart" (Beijing, Tianjing, etc.) of China and I think Washington would probably feel uncomfortable too if a Chinese nuclear sub were to hold live ammo training in International waters close to the Chesapeake Bay.

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