Making Excuses for the West Sea Naval Battle


This is just another hint of what South Korean government is prepared to give up to the North Koreans during the second Inter-Korean Summit actual physical South Korean territory.

Lee told the parliamentary standing committee on unification the “characteristics and historical background” of the sea border are important, but so are “the purposes South Korea aims to achieve through the establishment of the maritime border.” The minister made the remarks in response to Grand National Party Rep. Shim Jae-yup, who had asked why South Korean soldiers risked their lives to protect the sea border if it was “not a territorial concept,” as Lee had asserted on Aug. 10. There has been intense speculation that South Korea will discuss redrawing the NLL at the upcoming inter-Korean summit.

Shim said Lee seemed to mean that the 2002 battle would not have occurred if Seoul had accepted Pyongyang’s demand to redraw the NLL. The lawmaker accused Lee of insulting the memory of the South Korean soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the nation.

It is quite sickening that Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung is declaring that the six sailors killed and the eighteen more that were wounded in the deliberate North Korean attack died for nothing because they should not have been defending South Korean territory in the first place. The Roh Moo-hyun administration has been treating the soldiers killed in this battle as if they never existed, so it should come as no surprise that they are about to give up South Korean territory that has been defended for years with the blood of South Korean naval personnel. Can the men that died and were wounded that day be any more dishonored by this administration than by giving away the territory they gave their lives and blood to defend?