South Korean President Lee Myung-bak yesterday bemoaned the “precious deaths” of dozens of sailors killed when an explosion destroyed their warship, as suspicion increasingly fell on a North Korean torpedo blast in the disaster.
South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young said on Sunday that an underwater explosion appeared to have ripped apart the 1,200-tonne Cheonan on March 26, and that a torpedo blast seemed the most likely cause.
Investigators who examined salvaged wreckage separately said on Sunday that a close-range, external explosion likely sank it.
The government has been careful not to blame the North outright and Pyongyang has denied its involvement, but suspicion has focused on the North given the country’s history of provocation and attacks on the South.
The South on Sunday began five days of national mourning, due to culminate on Thursday in a mass funeral at a naval base in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul.
Accompanied by ministers and top officials, Lee visited a shrine outside Seoul’s city hall yesterday. He laid a white chrysanthemum, observed a moment of silence and gazed at framed portraits of the dead sailors.
“The Republic of Korea will not forget your lofty sacrifice,” Lee wrote in the guest book at the shrine.
A memorial banner was hung outside the presidential Blue House. Public shrines have been set up in several cities.
Last week, a tearful Lee said in a nationally televised speech that South Korea would respond “resolutely and unwaveringly” against anyone responsible for the blast.
The defense minister told reporters on Sunday that a likely cause of the disaster was the “bubble jet effect,” which refers to the rapidly expanding bubble an underwater torpedo blast can create and the subsequent destructive column of water unleashed.
“Basically, I think the bubble jet effect caused by a heavy torpedo is the most likely” cause, Kim said.
However, Kim did not speculate on who may have fired the weapon and said an investigation was continuing and that it’s still too early to determine the cause.
The Cheonan was on a routine patrol before the explosion sank it in one of South Korea’s worst naval disasters. Forty bodies have been recovered so far, but six crew members are still unaccounted for and are presumed dead.
The site of the sinking is near where the rival Koreas fought three times since 1999, most recently a November clash that left one North Korean soldier dead and three others wounded.
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