Divers gear up to search rough Yellow Sea waters in hopes of rescuing trapped SKorean seamen
By Si-young Lee, APSunday, March 28, 2010
SKorean divers gear up to head down to sunken ship
BAENGNYEONG ISLAND, South Korea — Military divers geared up Monday to plunge into the rough waters of the Yellow Sea in hopes of reaching 46 crewmembers feared trapped inside a naval ship that sank more than two days ago.
Fifty-eight men were rescued in the hours after the Cheonan split apart late Friday near the maritime border with North Korea and sank after suffering an explosion in the rear hull, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
No bodies have been retrieved, feeding families’ hopes that their sons and husbands might still be alive inside their watertight cabins.
President Lee Myung-bak convened security-related ministers again Monday and he urged authorities to focus on the rescue mission. The rescuers “should not give up hope,” he said, according to the presidential Blue House.
On Sunday, family members tearfully sailed around the wreckage site.
The 1,200-ton Cheonan had been on a routine patrol with other vessels in waters off South Korea’s western coast. The exact cause of the explosion — one of South Korea’s worst naval disasters — remained unclear, and officials said it could take weeks to determine.
Fierce waves and high winds have hampered the search in an area where the two Koreas have fought three bloody naval engagements since 1999.
The Cheonan sank near Baengnyeong Island, just south of the disputed sea border between the two Koreas. The countries remain in a state of war because their three-year conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953.
North Korea did not appear to be involved, and the country’s official news agency has not made any mention of the ship.
“We have detected ‘no special movements’ by North Korean forces; however, we, as a command, continue to monitor the situation and remain prepared for any contingency,” Gen. Walter Sharp, chief of the 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea, said in a statement Sunday.
On Monday, North Korea’s military issued a stern warning to the U.S. and South Korea against engaging in “psychological warfare” by letting journalists into the Demilitarized Zone.
“If the U.S. and the South Korean authorities persist in their wrong acts to misuse the DMZ for the inter-Korean confrontation despite our warnings, these will entail unpredictable incidents including the loss of human lives in this area for which the U.S. side will be wholly to blame,” the military said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang.
The dispatch made no mention of the Cheonan.
The cause of the explosion can only be determined after the ship is salvaged, a naval officer said Sunday. The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because of department policy, said it is likely to take about a month to salvage a ship of that size.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a South Korean, wrote to President Lee of his shock and sadness, his office said.
“I would like to extend my deepest sympathy and solidarity to the Korean people through you,” his letter said.
The grief was palpable among family members.
“My son said he would defend the nation, but instead he ended up like this,” one cried out as she clutched a framed photo of her son.
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Hyung-jin Kim reported from Seoul and Si-young Lee from Baengnyeong Island.
