Alright, everybody out of the pool.

Well, shit:

A North Korean submarine's torpedo sank a South Korean navy ship on 26 March causing the deaths of 46 sailors, an international report has found.

Investigators said they had discovered part of the torpedo on the sea floor and it carried lettering that matched a North Korean design.

For the non-Bens in the audience, this shit went down back in March, and the international report was released today. Speculation has been heavy from the beginning that it was a North Korean torpedo that sunk the Cheonan, and now we have fairly conclusive evidence that that was, in fact, the case. What happens next, I don't really know. I've been told that the release of the report coincides suspiciously with the June local elections, but considering the length of time that has passed since the incident, plus the multinational nature of the investigation, that seems somewhat implausible. My guess is things went deliberately slowly because no one wanted this to spiral out of control and because South Korea is highly opposed to any military escalation. In fact, it doesn't seem to me like anyone wants a military escalation. If this was a deliberate, from-the-top kind of attack, then North Korea was probably doing what it's done so well in the past, playing the crazy card to get aid and relief from sanctions. It's equally likely, though, that it was unplanned and spontaneous, the kind of thing one would expect from a navy that believes that its opponents have horns and drink children's blood.

All that said, I really don't know what kind of effect more sanctions will have, even if the Chinese are on board for this round. The Kim dynasty is absurdly resilient, and sanctions haven't had much of an effect on North Korea's actions or proclamations. They've also responded antagonistically to the report, suggesting that any sanctions will be interpreted as aggression. This only boxes Lee Myung-Bak in more; after weeks and weeks of wall-to-wall grief porn on every television station in this country mourning the lost sailors, he won't be able to get away with some toothless sanctioning and menacing statements. It's certainly possible that Ben and I may be home sooner than we thought.

Anyway, here's a good summary of the situation, even though it was written weeks before the report came out. This is a fascinating international crisis. If only I wasn't living in it.