Russia’s own Cheonan investigation team has not sent any official notification of the results of its investigation to the authorities in Seoul, a move which a spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense has asserted is because Russia considers its “political stance first rather than the scientific and practical facts.”
Speaking on a radio program broadcast by CBS in South Korea, the spokesperson, Won Tae Jae explained, “Regardless of whether it is the truth or not, Russia is sticking to a cautious tone in consideration of its national interests and relationship with South Korea, so it has not announced its public results yet.”
Recently, some newspaper reports have suggested that the Russian investigation team’s conclusion is that the Cheonan incident was caused by a mine, not by a North Korean torpedo.
However, the spokesperson stressed, “The Russian team should be considered not as an investigation team, but as an observation team, because they listened to our explanation and were provided with materials.”
He stressed, “It is a thorny issue that (the South Korean people) place too much emphasis on the Russian stance, which is based on Russia’s national interest, while the U.S., U.K. Australia and Sweden all accepted the result.”
He also explained several suspicions suggested by South Korean newspapers.
Both the Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang, left wing South Korean newspapers, asked questions on the same theme during the press conference held by the Ministry of the National Defense yesterday for the release of the final report into the Cheonan sinking, saying, “It is still in debate that the team could not prove that the ink in the word ‘No. 1’ was North Korea’s,” and, “The team excluded the possibility of an attack by a mine or striking a rock.”
Therefore, they continue to insist that South Korea’s final report is not trustworthy, Won explained.
He went on, “Suspicions about the Cheonan incident all stem from misunderstandings such as a lack of understanding of different phenomena between underwater explosions and above ground explosions, and non-contact explosions and contact explosions.”
Regarding suspicions about the ink, he explained, “The panel on which ‘No. 1’ was written was not heated even by one degree Celsius. The argument as to whether or not the ink was produced by North Korea is not valuable to consider.”
