South Korea Mutiny At Sea

A South Korean fisherman was hauling his nets on the Yellow Sea, not far from the sleepy island of Sohuksan, when he spotted something out of the ordinary: a battleship-gray boat adrift on the murky water. He alerted the authorities, who dispatched the navy to tow the vessel, which was out of fuel, to the island of Hawangdung. Their haul was startling indeed: the craft was a 45-ton torpedo boat belonging to China, which has strained relations with South Korea, and six of the 19 sailors on board were dead.

Gradually the South Koreans began to piece together an explanation for the unusual incursion into their waters of a Chinese ship of corpses. The torpedo boat, together with 15 other vessels, had been taking part in a routine Chinese naval exercise when two crew members seized control. Apparently, they intended to take the ship to South Korea, and from there they hoped to defect to Taiwan. Their plan, however, had gone awry as the mutiny turned into a gunfight in which the six crew members were killed and both mutineers were wounded.

Peking reacted to South Korea's harboring of the stricken vessel by putting its forces on alert; Seoul quickly did the same. Three Chinese warships, sent to retrieve the fugitive boat, entered South Korean waters, and the Koreans sent ships and jet fighters to intercept the interlopers. But the tense situation was quickly defused by U.S. diplomacy late on Friday. "We were asked to convey messages between the Chinese and the Koreans," commented a Washington official. Though China and South Korea do not maintain diplomatic relations, they have been edging toward a rapprochement. Neither side, it seems, wanted to allow the mutiny to jeopardize still fragile relations.

The Koreans protested the trespassing of the Chinese ships, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry acknowledged the mistake. South Korean Minister of Culture Lee Won Hong also publicly stressed that there had been "no political motives" involved in the incident and referred vaguely to a "simple scuffle" on board. By tiptoeing around the word mutiny, he helped his government slip out of the potentially embarrassing situation of having to put the mutinous crewmen on trial.

Three times in the past 30 months, Chinese defectors have successfully used South Korea as a way station for political asylum in Taiwan. With that in mind, Peking requested last Saturday that the Koreans return the ship and its entire crew. Seoul seemed certain to comply. The mutinous duo, however, are receiving medical treatment in a South Korean hospital. Once they are fit again, they will probably be allowed to go to Taiwan.