Wide-ranging incompetence and cover-ups took place night of Cheonan sinking, audit reveals
It has come to light that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Lee Sang-eui was heavily intoxicated on the night of March 26 when the sinking of the Cheonan took place. This represented an effective surrender of his command responsibilities. It was also revealed that military authorities willfully revised the time of the incident in order to avoid criticisms about an improper early response and edited only a portion of its thermal optical device (TOD) videos for disclosure to the media in order to justify the erroneous announcement of the time.
The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) released an interim announcement Thursday on the findings of its inspection of the response to the sinking of the Cheonan.
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With regard to Lee Sang-eui’s personal responsibility, a number of military sources reported that following a military leaders’ forum at the Gyeryongdae compound the day of the Cheonan’s sinking, he traveled to Seoul by KTX in a heavily inebriated state following a group dinner.
The sources said that he reportedly arrived at the Defense Ministry command control room around 10:42 p.m. that evening and, after spending about ten minutes attending a situation assessment meeting supervised by the ministry, effectively abandoned his duties and fell asleep.
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Additionally, the BAI inspection showed that the Joint Chiefs of Staff received notification from Naval Operations Command (NOC) that the time of the incident was 9:15 p.m., but revised the time to 9:45 p.m. when reporting it to Kim. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also received a report from the NOC about the possibility of the incident having resulting from an external shock, based on factors such the sound of an explosion, but omitted this from its report to their superiors.
“In altering the time of the incident, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were trying to avoid criticisms of an inadequate immediate response and lax alertness,” said Park Si-jong.
It was also found that the Defense Ministry and Joint Chiefs of Staff were aware that TOD video footage was recorded from 9:25:38 p.m. on the day of the sinking, but disclosed only an edited version with footage from after 9:35:08 p.m. “The military changed the time of the incident from 9:45 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. that night, but it concealed the extra footage because it would be difficult to stick with the previously announced time if it got out into the media,” said BAI.
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