Bereaved families, naval officers seek ban of Cheonan sinking film

It was a night like no other. The cold West Sea waters below deck continued their slow, steady rhythm while the 104 sailors on the South Korean naval corvette Cheonan were unaware their gray armored ship would sink, killing 46 of them.

What should have sunk with the ship on that more-than-breezy night of March 26, 2010, did not, however: a divisive national debate as to who, or what had caused the debacle.

Official statements from the South Korean government, a multinational investigation team and the U.N. charge that a North Korean submarine torpedoed the Cheonan while some question whether that conclusion is, in fact, a fact.

On Wednesday, two representatives of the dead sailors’ families and three naval officers, including the former captain of the Cheonan, filed an injunction with the Uijeongbu District Court to ban “The Cheonan Project,” a 75-minute documentary scheduled for a September release.

“The Cheonan Project,” which first screened at the Jeonju International Film Festival in April, features interviews and experiments suggesting that the cause of the Cheonan’s sinking is still unclear. This conjured the Cheonan controversy back to life, angering the friends and families of the dead sailors and military officials.

“The documentary should have included in its contents the findings of the international investigation team that included experts from the U.S., Canada, Australia, Sweden and the United Kingdom,” said Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok in a radio broadcast in May. The film unnecessarily spreads unjust suspicion to the tragic incident, he added.

The film’s director begged to differ.

“I am not siding with anyone, nor do I intend to criminalize anyone,” said filmmaker Baek Seung-woo on the same radio program. “The film’s intention is to show our society’s lack of communication and the consequent stiff sociocultural environment that it creates.”

Lawyer Kim Yang-hong who represents the five plaintiffs claimed that “although everyone and anyone has the right to freedom of speech and opinion, nobody has the right to unjustly spread false statements that may harm any person or organization.”

Kim further asserted that the film ignores the findings of the official government investigation and a U.N. statement which denounced North Korea for the provocation.

In May 2010 the South Korean government announced the results of an investigation by a joint team of civilian and military officials holding the North responsible. As evidence, the government showcased a rusted torpedo fragment with North Korean markings.

The multinational investigation team reported in September 2010 that a North Korean torpedo attack was the most likely scenario although other possibilities were not ruled out.

Some South Korean civilian and foreign sources have questioned the findings, including a July 2010 Nature article citing chemical experiments.

The article mentioned an independent experiment done by Yang Pan-seok at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, who “found that the ratio of oxygen to aluminum” in rapidly cooling aluminum, resembling those in a torpedo explosion within cold waters, “would be much lower than” what was inferred in the South Korean government report.

North Korea is a contentious and sensitive topic in the South to all extents. In a separate court dealing on Wednesday, a man in his 40s was sentenced to an 18-month prison term for uploading pro-North Korean statements on the social media site Twitter such as saying the North was not responsible for the November 2010 Yeonpyeongdo Island shelling which killed two South Korean marines and two civilians.

By Jeong Hunny (hj257@heraldcorp.com)