Two visiting U.S.-based experts called Friday in Tokyo for a reinvestigation into the sinking of a South Korean warship allegedly by a North Korean submarine, arguing a multinational probe and report on the incident had many inconsistencies and flaws.
The report, released in May, was based on a probe by the Joint Civilian-Military Investigation Group (JIG) to look into the March sinking of the Cheonan and the loss of 46 South Korean sailors.
Jae Jung Suh, an associate professor of international politics at Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C., and Seung Hun Lee, a professor of physics at the University of Virginia, claimed the condition of the salvaged Cheonan is inconsistent with the JIG conclusion that the sinking was due to a shock wave and a bubble effect and that the blue ink marking on the torpedo reading "No. 1" in Hangul would have been burned off in a detonation.
They also said the "white compounds" found on both the recovered ship and torpedo were not substances resulting from an explosion but are most likely "rusted" aluminum exposed to moisture or water for a long time."
"We do not know (what happened to the Cheonan), and nobody knows at the moment," Suh said Friday at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward.