 Lt. Col. Kwon Tae-seop speaks at a briefing held in the National Defense Ministry building in Seoul, Wednesday. He said marks detected on the surface of the North Korean torpedo, which sank the warship Cheonan last year, were not the remains of a sea squirt. Kwon made the remarks based on the findings of the National Fisheries Research and Development Institute. / Yonhap |
By Kang Hyun-kyung
The National Defense Ministry said Wednesday that a reddish spot detected on the surface of the North Korean torpedo that attacked the 1,300-ton warship Cheonan last March is not the remains of a sea squirt.
The defense ministry unveiled the result about a week after it requested the National Fisheries Research and Development Institute to investigate the nature of the spot on March 29.
The ministry exhibited the torpedo again on March 26 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the maritime tragedy, which took the lives of 46 sailors near the maritime border in the West Sea.
A 0.8 mm-diameter reddish spot was detected on the rear of the torpedo.
Some speculated that the spot was the remains of a dead sea squirt.
The institute’s finding, which was made public on Wednesday, refuted this.
It said no DNA was detected in the material and therefore it was safe to say that it was not a sea squirt. The institute said it knows nothing about the nature of the material.
Last month, Shin Sang-chul, a former member of the investigation team, claimed that a small sea squirt, which cannot be found in the West Sea where the frigate Cheonan sank, was detected on the surface of the torpedo debris.
In the wake of the first anniversary of the sinking of warship Cheonan, some skeptics still question the evidence that the Seoul-led multinational team presented to prove the frigate was sunk by a North Korean torpedo.
![[PHOTOS] It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/newsV2/images/santa_0001_9a339f16fb3ac.JPG/dims/resize/178/optimize)
![[INTERVIEW] INFINITE's Nam Woo-hyun returns after battling with rare cancer](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/a3c3440b8dc84bce8ca94394a170fef2.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
![[PHOTOS] It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas](http://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/newsV2/images/santa_0001_9a339f16fb3ac.JPG/dims/resize/268/optimize)
