The Joint Civilian-Military Investigation Group, which South Korea established to investigate the sinking of its corvette, the Cheonan, in March, is expected to publish a final report this month. Much is riding on the document, which will be studied carefully by analysts in various countries, including China. The interim report in May concluded that the vessel was struck by a North Korean torpedo.
However, China and Russia have not accepted these findings and, even within South Korea, debate has been intense. A number of scholars, too, have cast doubt on the findings.
The three conclusions of the Joint Investigation Group (JIG) were rejected by a report, 'Rush to Judgment: Inconsistencies in South Korea's Cheonan Report', co-authored by Seunghun Lee, a physics professor at the University of Virginia, and J.J. Suh, director of Korea studies at Johns Hopkins University.
'After a careful analysis of the JIG's report and evidence and our own physical testing,' they write, 'we find that the JIG has failed (1) to substantiate its claim that there was an outside explosion; (2) to establish the causal linkage between the Cheonan's sinking and the torpedo; and (3) to demonstrate that the torpedo was manufactured by the DPRK [North Korea].'
Instead of accepting the JIG's report, they call for a new 'investigation that is as thorough, objective and scientific as humanly possible' in order to 'get to the bottom of the Cheonan incident to discover the cause and perpetrator'.
It now turns out that the JIG's final report may not be made public. That would be a mistake. For one thing, aside from South Koreans, the experts involved came primarily from Seoul's allies - the United States, Australia and Britain. Sweden was the only exception.
There has been no explanation as to why other experts, such as from China and Russia, were not invited to take part. Had they done so, their governments would have had difficulty rejecting the findings.