hankyoreh

Oct. 21. (Photo by Ryu Woo-jong)

By Son Won-je, Staff Writer　

North Korea reiterated its innocence of involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan Tuesday and announced that it was prepared to present the South with a fragment of the steel alloy used in Korean People’s Army torpedoes as proof.

In a “National Defense Commission Review Team Open Letter” announced Tuesday through the state-run Korean Central News Agency, North Korea stated that its torpedoes were not made of aluminum alloy like the fragment salvaged from the site of the sinking off Baengnyeong Island, but “are juche-style torpedoes made with steel alloy materials.”

“By announcing that the torpedo fragment purportedly salvaged from the waters off Baengnyeong Island where the Cheonan sank was from a Northern torpedo, the U.S. empire and the Lee Myung-bak gang of traitors contradicted their own North Korean torpedo attack theory,” the letter continued.

The letter also dismissed the evidence of the “1 beon” (No. 1) scrawled on the torpedo propeller as “preposterous evidence.”

“Our weapons industry sector does not inscribe necessary numbers with a pen when making components or machinery, it engraves them, and even then it uses the term ho (number), not beon,” it stated.

The review team also made point-by-point refutations of the other pieces of evidence cited by the Joint Investigation Group in its final report, including the formation of a water column, an aluminum-based material attached to the hull, the possibility of stranding, thermal optical device (TOD) video materials, and a torpedo diagram. The team criticized the JIG’s investigation findings as “a concoction.”

The team also said, “If the U.S. and the gang of traitors continue to run amok in a riot of anti-republic antagonism, making a lot of noise about the Cheonan incident, we will have second and third revelations about the true nature of this fabrication.”

Analysts believe North Korea’s new announcement of this open letter by the NDC review team is intended as a refusal of recent South Korean demands for North Korea to admit responsibility for the Cheonan sinking and apologize as a precondition for moving forward with inter-Korean relations.The North previously held a conference for foreign and domestic press in May to refute the South Korean findings on the sinking.

Meanwhile, the South’s navy fired warning shots to drive a North Korean fishing boat away from the tense Yellow Sea border, military officials said Wednesday.

The warning shots were fired earlier in the day when the boat violated the Northern Limit Line (NLL) border, an official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]