Seoul has no right to accuse NKorea of Cheonan sinking: inspectors

PYONGYANG, March 31 (Itar-Tass) - The authorities of South Korea "have
absolutely no right to accuse the Democratic People's Republic of Korea of
sinking the South Korean Cheonan corvette in the Yellow Sea at the end of
March last year," said a statement of a group of inspectors from the
National Defense Commission (NDC), released by the KCNA news agency one
year after the accident.
By circulating false information about the involvement of the DPRK in
that accident, Seoul contributes to a further aggravation of a crisis in
inter-Korean relations, the statement said.
It also said that South Korea has no grounds to place responsibility
on North Korea for the exchange of fire in the area of Yeonpyeong Island
in the Yellow Sea last November. According to the statement, North Korea's
actions were a response "to a provoking shelling of its territorial waters
by South Korea".
The NDC believes that South Korea must renounce its accusations of
North Korea in connection with the two incidents and stop its propaganda
campaign.
It warned that the North Korean army was ready both for a dialogue and
for a real warfare.
Last May, an investigation commission that was created in South Korea
comprising experts from the United States, Great Britain, Australia and
Sweden announced that the ship was sunk by a torpedo attack. Its materials
claim that North Korea's marking was found on the fragments of the
torpedo. After that, North Korea turned to Seoul and Washington with a
demand to admit to the place of the corvette's sinking a group of military
experts from the National Defence Commission to verify this information,
but was denied permission.
ROKS Cheonan (PCC-772) was a South Korean Pohang-class corvette of the
Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN), commissioned in 1989. On 26 March 2010, it
broke in two and sank near the sea border with North Korea. An
investigation conducted by an international team of concluded that Cheonan
was sunk by a torpedo launched by a North Korean Yeono class miniature
submarine. On 9 July 2010, the United Nations Security Council issued a
Presidential Statement condemning the attack but without identifying the
attacker.
The ship had a crew of 104 men at the time of sinking, and a total of
58 crew were rescued. Another 46 crew died.
"As already clarified, the Cheonan' case was the first provocation
cooked up by the south Korean authorities to put pressure on the DPRK in
all fields in collusion with foreign forces whereas the Yeonpyeong
shelling (was) a premeditated provocation to ignite a war against the
DPRK," the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on
March 26.
"The more loudly the US and the South Korean group of traitors grow in
blaming the DPRK for the (Cheonan) case, the more glaringly they will
reveal their ugly colors as the anti-DPRK confrontation maniacs who
shamelessly make the profound confusion of right and wrong," the KCNA
commentary said then.