Korean Situation.

And neither does South Korea. Think of the problems that Germany has had since reunification, multiply them by 100 and you might have an idea.

To its election day in Korea tomorrow and I'm been hearing a lot of rumours, some that surprisingly make a lot of sense.

A lot of the locals here are convinced that NK had nothing to do with it, not for any lack of love for their Northern Brethren etc but rather because the situation just doesn't make sense added to the coincidence of the timing and especially because of China's cryptic response to the whole situation.

So to try and put this into points;

1. NK had nothing to gain from this in any capacity, in fact they will loose because this incident has helped the SK current administration and the current administration are extremely hard line with the North. The North refuses to even have talks with the SK president its that bad. There have been skirmishes in the same area of sea since the Korean war finished, year after year. People have been killed, ships damaged etc yet never was responsibility denied. It doesn't gain NK anything by sinking a SK ship and then denying it.

2. The current administration is deeply unpopular and is almost guaranteed to loose a lot of support in the elections tomorrow, castrating the current presidents power. This incident may save them some support as they are hard line against the North, very coincidental.

3. If it was an accident, especially one caused by or taken part in, by the yanks then the current administration would be in much worse trouble. Nothing would get the riots and anti-government demonstrations going then this administrations best mates causing the deaths of Korean sailors. Theres a very strong anti-American military attitude among the populace especially concerning events where Americans are involved in deaths of the local populace.

4. China has stated "Beijing would not defend those responsible for the sinking of a South Korean warship". This is an extremely strange comment from China. They can't 'not' defend North Korea from invasion, they would loose far too much by allowing the Americans into North Korea as has already been highlighted. The message is very strange in its wording, I'd put money on it that China knows, or at least thinks they know that, NK had nothing to do with it and is simply working their press releases around that fact, or imagined fact.

So the current conspiracy theory ,if you want to call it that, states that the ship was sunk by accident, either through its training exercises with the yanks or by some other means such as hitting an old mine. People then believe the current administration decided to place the blame for this at North Korea's feet in hopes of gaining support for the forthcoming elections because of their hard line policies. The US too, would hardly object to this strategy if they knew it was happening.

Quotes from Koreans supporting the above, from the BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia_pacific/10154787.stm

SUNGSOO JI wrote:

To be honest, I'm not sure I trust the information given to us about the Cheonan sinking. It could be a trick because it's election period at the moment, so it could be some kind of strategy.

LEE JAE-YOUN wrote:

First of all, why has this happened now? We have an election in one week and many acts of provocation by North Korea have occurred in the period before an election. So we wonder - has this warship sinking accident been abused by the ruling party?
The evidence is not clear, yet our government takes the result of the investigation as a fact. But I wonder how the mark of the ink pen still exists [on the torpedo fragment] even after the explosion? And why has North Korea put a signature at the bottom of the torpedo?

GYUHANG KIM wrote:

I and many others suspect the South Korean government of deliberately accusing North Korea, even of making up the proof.
We are well aware of the anti-North Korean sentiment of the government and do not trust the official report at all.

I also think the government is ruining years of hard work of former presidents, especially Kim Dae-jung, who have worked so hard to take a first step towards reunification.

<snip>

Rumours are spreading about the cause of the sinking of the ship - such as a possible mistake with an American submarine during a joint exercise, which was covered up by the South Korean government in order to discredit North Korea.

Not good. Lee Myung-bak's popularity has slumped. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia_pacific/10211824.stm