An article on the Cheonan warship sinking, “The whole story of the South Korean government as a false account?” was published in Telepolis on June 1. It documents several of the misleading claims being made by the South Korean government to put the blame on North Korea.

The June 2 election in South Korea for local and regional government showed that many South Koreas citizens and netizens rejected the Lee Myung-bak government claims and rendered his Grand National Party candidates a surprising and serious defeat.

This, however, has not deterred the Lee government from its goal. The election results were announced demonstrating the criticism of the government’s hostile policy toward North Korean represented by the so called “investigation” blaming North Korea for the sinking of the Cheonan. Yet, the South Korean government initiated action to take its spurious claims to the United Nations Security Council. A helpful perspective is offered by Peter Lee in his Asia Times Online article, “The Cheonan sinking … and Korea rising.”

“What is indisputable,” Peter Lee writes, “is the determination of the Lee Myung-bak administration to exploit the geopolitical opportunity presented by the sinking.” He explains how the South Korean president not only tried to use the incident, “as a 9/11 opportunity” to get support for his government in the local and regional elections, which clearly failed, but also to “strengthen the South Korean alliance with the US” to offer a counterweight to China.

Even more serious, however, is the observation made by some in South Korea, that the Lee administration is endangering their lives by its hostile acts toward North Korea. Similarly the strategy of trying to use the UN Security Council to give a seal of approval for the so called “investigation” which drew significant criticisms from politicians and the public at home is but a sign of the significant role the US government is playing in this dangerous South Korean gambit.

The South Korean NGO People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) recently published an English translation of a critique of the South Korean government’s “international” investigation of the Cheonan sinking. The PSPD report provides helpful documentation of a number of the inconsistencies and fallacies of the whole process of the claimed “investigation.”

According to the PSPD critique, it was only after significant criticism of the fact that the South Korean military was conducting the “investigation” of the Cheonan sinking, that it was announced that four other nations had been invited to be part of the “investigation”. Little is known, however, about what role these other nations played in the investigation. PSPD reports that the head of the US group appeared at the press conference announcing the results of the investigation, to express US government support. He said that there had been close cooperation between South Korea and the US in the investigation. This did not, however, answer the question about the role the foreign nations in the investigation and whether they had any ability to contribute an independent perspective .

North Korea asked to be allowed to send a team of investigators to examine the supposed evidence. South Korea refused the request.

One of the civilian members of the investigation said that he was not provided with any briefing materials or basic information. Also he said that the investigation only considered the theory of the government about the torpedo as the cause of the sinking, and that the investigation was conducted to support that theory.

The government has brought lawsuits or charges against several citizens and netizens and a national assembly representative who expressed disagreement with the claims of the government.

The PSPD report raises a number of other important issues about the nature of the South Korean government investigation.

By bringing the Cheonan issue to the UN Security Council, the South Korean government is presenting the UN with a serious challenge. The PSPD report has urged the South Korean government to refrain from international actions until the National Assembly has been assisted in conducting a fact-finding process. The effort of the South Korean government to ignore the questions of its citizens and politicians and take the matter to the UN Security Council is the effort to use the UN Security Council to deny democratic processes to its own citizens. PSPD has documented how what the South Korean government is doing by bringing the issue to the Security Council is increasing the threat to peace and security on the Korean peninsula. This is the opposite of what the Security Council is to be involved with under the UN Charter.

How the Security Council handles this issue will be an important demonstration of its ability to fulfill its obligations under the UN charter to the other member nations of the UN and to the people of those nations.

For PSPD Report See:

http://blog.peoplepower21.org/Peace/31028 http://blog.peoplepower21.org/Peace/31029
http://blog.peoplepower21.org/Peace/31030