Showing posts with label Buoy 3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Buoy 3. Show all posts

Friday, May 21, 2010

The Sinking of the Cheonan and the Mystery of Buoy 3

If the Cheonan sinking turns out to be South Korea's Kennedy assassination, maybe Buoy 3 will be the conspiracy theorists' grassy knoll.

Asia Focus has an article up by a citizen journalist, Tanaka Sakai, entitled, Who Sank the South Korean Warship Cheonan? A New Stage in the US-Korean War and US-China Relations.

Tanaka notes a lot of mysterious salvage activity at Buoy 3, a third location near Baengnyeong Island (the bow and stern of the Cheonan sunk at the Buoy 1 and Buoy 2 locations, 6.8 km apart and 1.8 km and 6.4 km, respectively from Buoy 3).


Warrant Officer Han Joo-ho perished after a dive at Buoy 3. His memorial service was held at Buoy 3, and Tanaka speculates that he died in a mission to rescue the crew of an American submarine after a friendly-fire Mexican standoff.

It is difficult to tell where investigative reporting ends and the desire to avoid empowering the conservative ROK government with a 9/11-type narrative begins.

In any case, there seems to be enough ambiguity to keep the Cheonan pot boiling for a long, long time.