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[Choice Times = Joo-hyun Park, Guest Columnist (CEO of Jaedam Entertainment)]
Two anti-ship missiles struck a commercial vessel in international waters.
23 days later, the Lee Jae-myung administration released an official conclusion so startling it could rewrite the history of modern weapons technology:
\”It is difficult to determine intent unless Iran acknowledges it.\”
Guided missiles do not wander aimlessly.
They activate their radars, lock onto targets, and continually correct their flight paths. In this case, two missiles struck the vessel’s stern roughly one minute apart.
Yet officials say the strikes may not have been intentional.
By that logic, if someone struck a pedestrian twice in the back of the head with a baseball bat and then claimed, \”My hand slipped and I accidentally hit him twice,\” would we simply shrug and sign a settlement?
The desperation behind that explanation is almost palpable.
After all, imagine the predicament of officials who must now present that script as an official government statement.
Recall President Lee’s repeated declarations.
Time and again he vowed that anyone who harmed South Korean citizens would face devastating consequences.
The message was clear: harm a South Korean, and you will pay a heavy price.
Then two missiles, allegedly launched by Iran, struck a South Korean commercial vessel.
What happens if the government officially labels the incident a deliberate military attack?
Officials would immediately confront the uncomfortable reality that they must act on those grand promises.
They would face pressure to impose meaningful consequences on Iran.
They would likely have to cooperate more closely with U.S.-led maritime operations in the Strait of Hormuz and adopt a tougher posture toward Tehran.
That may be precisely the problem.
Unable to reconcile earlier rhetoric with current realities and unwilling to move toward confrontation, the government appears to have taken another route: suggesting the two guided missiles somehow arrived by accident.
Critics contend this amounts to suspending common sense itself.
The contrast is even sharper through a domestic political lens.
Within South Korea, the same voices that immediately read hidden political intent into a coffee company’s marketing slogan—finding alleged references in words like \”tank\” or \”desk\”—now seem unable to assess intent when guided weapons cross the Persian Gulf.
The facility for spotting ideological motives in advertising seems to disappear when missiles are the subject.
Abroad, the reaction is often: \”Surely they didn’t mean to hit us.\”
At home, however, political opponents, businesses, and ordinary citizens face relentless scrutiny over their words and motives.
That contrast invites charges of selective outrage.
Perhaps we should adopt this novel theory of physics.
Perhaps guided missiles occasionally take leisurely excursions over the sea.
Perhaps they sometimes happen, by coincidence, to strike the same ship twice.
Perhaps, in this strange logic, the burden falls not on those who launch missiles but on those who are struck to explain the attacker’s motives.
And perhaps, in such a country, expecting a robust national security policy has become an unreasonable luxury.
#IranTensions
#NationalSecurity
#ForeignPolicy
* This article has been translated by ChatGPT.
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