The South Korean administration’s investigation team has released the result of a re-enactment of the shooting, and believes that “The possibility is high that a North Korean soldier shot Park Wang Ja from within 100-metres while she was standing still or walking in a leisurely way.” The information was released at a press conference on the morning of the 1st.
Kim Dong Hwan, Armory Department Chief Researcher at the National Institute of Scientific Investigation (NISI), said that “As a result of a mock experiment using a dummy with the same physical attributes as the late Park Wang Ja it has been established that if a soldier shot her at a standstill the shooting distance would have been 100 meters. Otherwise, if the soldier shot her while chasing, it would have been within 60 meters.”
“Several kinds of scientific experiments gave us the result that she was shot while standing still or walking very slowly, because the bullet holes in her body were parallel to the land on which she stood. If she had been running fast then it wouldn’t have been possible,” Kim said.
Regarding the direction and position of the shots, Kim said that “From her walking direction, she was estimated to have been shot from two o’clock and from somewhere between four and six o’clock respectively.”
To the question of “did the soldier shoot her after acknowledging she was a tourist?” researcher Kim answered that there are limits to our ability to answer decisively. However, he pointed out, “Around five in the morning, it is still possible to distinguish man or woman.”
Regarding North Korea’s intent, “Through these experiments we cannot establish whether North Korea intended to kill her or not. The only thing we can figure out is that at the time of shooting the soldier was aware of the movement of the target, and that she was hardly moving, if at all.”
Hwang Boo Gi, the chief of the South Korean administration investigation team, explained briefly ahead of the press conference that “We have carried out these mock experiments in order to verify what North Korea has stated about the incident.”
“The experiments were significant as a way to figure out what the problems were among ‘facts’ that North Korea has given us, and also to re-organize the incident. However, the on-site investigation should be undertaken as soon as possible because these experiments have serious limits for clarifying the incident definitively.
