Left Flank

It's just for reference, but now Hyundai Asan - the company running the Mt. Geumgang junkets, and also Pyongyang's preferred official South Korean entity - has changed the facts surrounding the death of South Korean tourist Park Wang-ja last week..

The details were given in a press conference at Hyundai Asan's headquarters in Gye-dong, Seoul on Wednesday by the firm's president Yoon Man-joon. Yoon said he was told by officials of the North's Guidance Bureau for Comprehensive Development of Scenic Spots, Asan's partner in North Korea, that Park was first spotted by a North Korean soldier at a point about 800m north of the fence that demarcates the off-limits area, and that the soldier fired a total of four shots, including a warning shot.

Initially, the North said she had been spotted 1,200 m north of the fence and the soldier fired two warning shots. South Korean tourists who were nearby at the time of the incident have consistently testified that the shooting took place around 5:20 a.m. last Friday and they heard only two shots. The new account is unlikely to satisfy doubters of North Korea's version.

After checking the hotel's CCTV tape, Asan staff «confirmed that Park left the hotel at 4:18 a.m., not 4:31 a.m. as was previously believed,» Yoon said. «The time difference came because the CCTV's inbuilt clock was 12 minutes and 50 seconds fast.»

Yoon added Park was shot and fell to the ground 300 m from the safety fence, not 200 m as initially reported.

He also estimated that the shooting took place «between 4:55 and 5 a.m.,» and not at 4:50 a.m. as initially reported, or at 5 a.m. as the North said last Saturday.

Yoon said the reason for the shooting given was that Park «turned back and ran away even after she was ordered three times to halt by the North Korean soldier. I heard that the soldier, as he was running on the sandy beach, had difficulty catching up with Park, who was running on the hardened ground in the area, so he finally aimed his gun and fired three shots at her.»

Some differences in the accounts, he said, were due to the original report about the distances being made based on visual measurement by North Korean officials and Hyundai Asan staffers, without taking accurate measurements.

Did the North Koreans use the same technology to measure disatnces as was in the clocks?

After thinking about it, I think a student might have said it best, although at the time I thought the notion was daffy: the North sent a political message. Whatever that message might be is beyond me, or even those students today. Chosun Daily exhausts its wits.

This is stubbornness goes beyond the realms of reason. Heated rhetoric is nothing new from North Korea, but this tops everything we have seen before. The incident involves a North Korean soldier killing an unarmed South Korean woman by shooting her in the back. And she was dressed in civilian clothes as well. According to a formal agreement the two Koreas signed involving entry to and sojourn within the resort, North Korea is responsible for the safety of South Korean tourists. Even if a South Korean tourist violates regulations, North Korean authorities are required to stop the tourist first and then begin investigation. Yet before it took any other measures, North Korea simply pulled the trigger.

The North said a sentry fired warning shots before shooting the tourist, a 53-year-old Seoul housewife named Park Wang-ja. But a witness said only two shots were heard, and Park had two gunshot wounds. There is a strong possibility that no warning shots were fired at all. North Korea said Park left her hotel at 4:30 a.m. and walked 1.1 km to a fence enclosing the tourist beach. North Korea said Park then climbed over the fence and walked another 1.2 km until she came in front of a military guard post. After hearing a sentry tell her to stop, Park then ran back 1 km the way she came, until she was shot at 4:50 a.m. Thus the North Korean account.

If North Korea’s explanation is true, then in a span of just 20 minutes, Park would have traversed a distance of 3.3 km on ankle-deep sand. That means she traveled at a speed of 9.9 km/h. A healthy person in their 20s jogging briskly on level ground achieves no more than 8-9 km/h. So North Korea’s account makes no sense. It is hard not to be suspicious that the North is hiding the truth to cover up responsibility. The only way to get to the truth is for a South Korean fact-finding team to go Mt. Kumgang and investigate the scene. But North Korea is refusing to allow this.

Another college student on the tour has offered his account of the incident.

“Before dawn in the morning of July 11, I saw a 50-something woman in black walking toward the north and there was a fence, ” said Lee In-bok, 23, a sophomore at Kyungpook National University majoring in history, in a telephone interview with the Dong-A Ilbo. He said, “About 5-10 minutes afterwards, I heard two shootings with 10 seconds apart from the North and a scream.”

Lee, who was participating in the 2008 Mount Geumgang Life and Peace Camp for College Students, was sitting on the beach to see sunrise at the moment.

Lee said, “When she walked toward the fence, I did not take it seriously because I did not know whether the area was off-limits or there was a military watch house.”

He added, “Having heard of the shooting, I went up to a sand dune along the beach next to the fence and looked at where the gun shot came from. I found a person lying down. Three soldiers came out from bushes that were 300 meters away and touched the person with their feet to see whether she was dead or not.”

“When I first saw the scene, I thought it was a military drill or an internal problem and came back to the hotel. When I came back to the South, I heard that it was an accident,” he said. “Before the shooting, I heard some speaker sound from a village in the North, but I was not able to understand it clearly.”

Obviously, South Koreans take their «Southern» liberties far too lightly. In DPRK, a bullet is the price for making mistakes. There's also something so «Korean» about returning an accusation with a counter-accusation, as if considering the others' viewpoint is a diplomatic nuisance. And here, perhaps, that student today was right. Although it would seem, that with the Six-Party Talks continuing, Pyongyang receiving heavy fuel from Russia, and ROK President Lee MYung-bak considering inter-Korean relations and the shooting separate issues, Pyongyang can afford to be contrite. Or, contrariwise, it can now afford to be as confident and candid as it wants to be.