I was here for that very chaotic 2002. I recall that there was an immediate apology issued, but as was the case in the media, the apology was just a blurb in the paper and lost amid all the World Cup hoopla.

Whether he or his PAO officer apologized greatly at the start wouldn’t have made a difference.

I disagree.

The PAO visited the deceases girls' houses daily and that made a huge difference because in spite of their best efforts – the radicals were never able to co-opt the parents.

Video of a grieving mother screaming USFK killed her baby girl would have been the icing on the cake – but that never happened – for the simple fact that MAJ Ono (the 2ID PAO) won them over with his sincerity.

The best the radicals could do was co-opt other relatives of the girls (a few uncles). But that's not the same as the parents.

I was there for all of this – as part of a team the command put together to deal with it.

The fact the Korean media refused to report on the candlelight vigil USFK held with many VIPs from USFK, the US Embassy, and Korean officials proves that. It was a big event that mixed elements of American and Korean mourning customs and paying tribute to the dead. It demonstrated how seriously USFK took the accident — which is why the Korean media didn't want the country to see it.

Apologizing profusely is the smart and customary thing to do in Korea. But, there have been plenty of examples, including ones not related to the US in Korea, that show part of the culture of apologizing is how selective the people can be in accepting or rejecting them.

Apologies do not automatically wipe away an incident.

We can also bring up the West Sea Battle here – which occurred a month or two before the armored vehicle accident – where North Korean patrol boats crossed into South Korean waters and shot up a SK patrol boat killing a half dozen SK sailors and wounding more:

Under pressure from SK and others, NK finally agreed to release a (joint?) statement that simply expressed regret that the incident had happened but also left open the idea that it was South Korea's fault.

It was far from an apology or accepting responsibility, but President Kim Dae Jung was quick to announce it as an apology and called for the subject to be closed. And only a few people in the Korean press voiced outrage about this. The society didn't utter a peep — which wasn't surprising, because they hadn't expressed any rage against NK's actions from the start.