The U.S. and the south Korean authorities started a joint investigation into the real state of defoliant contamination in the Waegwan U.S. military base but a lot of doubts are arising about its effectiveness, the editorial said.

The U.S. stand is unilaterally reflected in the investigation way and representatives of inhabitants in the region were not involved in the investigation, it said, adding that in this situation it is hard to expect any investigation results understandable to the people.

The U.S. attempts to survey less 10 meters underground by locator in places where drums of defoliant were guessed to be there and then conduct boring and measurement of pollution level only in the spot where abnormal sign is found. In case of survey into underground water it has decided to deal with only the main toxic substance contained in defoliant.

Disclosing this fact, the editorial stressed that strict investigation should be made into the case of defoliant burial as it is related to the existence of the population.