NK 'no' to apology over warship sinking
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/ Korea Times file
By Lee Min-hyung
North Korea has refused to apologize over a torpedo attack that sank the warship Cheonan, calling for the South to reinvestigate the case.
"Pyongyang has nothing to do with the incident," the North's National Defense Commission said Tuesday.
The attack happened near the West Sea border on March 26, 2010, and killed 46 South Korean sailors. Following the incident, President Lee Myung-bak stopped all inter-Korean cooperation by imposing the so-called May 24 sanction.
This increased military tension and on November 23, 2010, the North shelled the South’s Yeonpyeong Island, killing four, including two civilians.
King Sejong the Great, a 7,600-ton Aegis warship, in a military drill days before the fourth anniversary of the sinking of warship Cheonan, on March 19, 2014. / Korea Times file
Pyongyang has since demanded the Seoul government lift the sanction, denying responsibility for the warship sinking.
An international group, including 24 military experts from five countries, investigated the warship attack. Two months after the sinking, the South officially announced the North’s torpedo attack was the main reason for the tragedy, which caused a strong backlash from the North.
“(Even though it’s been five years since the incident) we want to scientifically reinvestigate the exact cause of the sinking with the South,” the North's National Defense Commission said Tuesday.
“We will immediately reveal the truth before the world if the South brings, at the truce village of Panmunjom, all the evidence related to the incident.”
The statement came days after Park Sang-hak, a defector-turned-activist, said he would send anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border to mark the fifth anniversary of the incident. He had earlier said the only thing that could stop his campaign was the North’s sincere apology.
But the North threatened it would mobilize artillery forces if activist groups in the South sent such material.
Park, president of anti-Pyongyang activist group Fighters for a Free North Korea, said Monday he would stop sending the leaflets for now amid worries over the North's possible military provocation.