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South Korea is rife with rumors over the mysterious sinking of the Navy patrol craft Cheonan on March 26. While the Department of Defense struggles to cobble together answers, few people are hiding their anger and doubts about the department’s clueless crisis management. One critic described the Defense Department’s crisis standard operating procedure as “a bureaucratic giant running around with his hair on fire -- but no system.”  
When both the media and the opposition parties fiercely attacked the military’s poor response, the government and the ruling party responded by saying that people should not second-guess the cause of the disaster, in which 44 sailors died and 58 were rescued. In addition, President Lee Myung-bak warned that...