South Korea suspects a North Korean torpedo caused the mysterious sinking of one of its navy ships last month, Reuters reported, citing South Korea's Yonhap News.

The South Korean military points to intelligence gathered in a joint investigation with the United States, marking the strongest accusations yet that North Korea was behind the March 26 incident.

Fifty-eight of the ship's crew were rescued while the ship was sinking and 38 bodies have been found, most of them last week, when the stern was raised from the water. Eight crew members are still unaccounted for.

Until now, South Korean officials had not openly blamed the North for one of its worst naval disasters, though investigators had said the explosion was most likely external.

Last week, North Korea accused South Korea of spreading false rumors about the incident. North Korean officials have denied involvement in the blast that broke the 1,200-ton Cheonan into two pieces during a routine patrol near the countries' sea border.

North Korea has suggested that the South seeks to blame North Korea in order to strengthen the ruling party's position in upcoming local elections and shore up international sanctions against the North. The U.N. Security Council slapped on tough new sanctions on North Korea following its second nuclear test last year.

The divided peninsula remains technically at war, since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/04/21/south-korea-suspects-north-korean-torpedo-ship-sinking/

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Military intelligence officers had warned earlier this year that North Korea was preparing a suicide submarine attack on a South Korean vessel in retaliation for an earlier defeat in a sea battle, a newspaper said Thursday.

There has been growing speculation that North Korea was behind the March 26 explosion that split the 1,200-ton Cheonan in two and sank it, killing at least 38 people and leaving eight missing.

Seoul has not directly blamed Pyongyang for the blast, and the North has denied involvement, but suspicion remains given the country's history of provocation and attacks on the South.

On Thursday, the mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported the Korea Defense Intelligence Command had alerted the navy weeks ahead of the ship sinking that North Korea was preparing underwater suicide teams in mini-submarines to attack the South.

These "human torpedo" squads were said to involve small submarines that are navigated so close to the target that their torpedoes or explosives blow up both target and the attackers, or are timed to explode while the attackers escape from the vehicle, the report said.

The attack preparations were aimed at retaliating against the South over its defeat in a naval skirmish in November, the paper said. 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.

South Korea is investigating the wreck of the Cheonan and investigators say preliminary indications are that the blast was external, not on board the ship. Some experts say the investigation could take several years.

The two Koreas have never signed a peace treaty since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce.

The Chosun Ilbo said the military was investigating whether the navy and Joint Chiefs of Staff had been properly braced for a North Korean attack following the intelligence warning, though it's not clear whether the Cheonan sank due to any attack.

Navy and Joint Chiefs of Staff officials said they would not comment on the report because it involves military intelligence affairs.

Also Thursday, Yonhap news agency reported that military intelligence officers believe a North Korean submarine torpedoed the Cheonan based on a joint intelligence analysis with the U.S. military.

Yonhap, citing an unidentified military source, said the assessment was submitted to the presidential Blue House shortly after the warship sank. The Blue House, however, denied it has received such an intelligence report.

A Seoul-based activist raised a similar claim Tuesday, saying he had been in touch with a North Korean military officer who had claimed that a North Korean semi-submersible vessel fired a torpedo at the Cheonan.

A high-profile North Korean defector living in Seoul said he believes North Korean leader Kim Jong Il masterminded the blast to stoke tension, cause social confusion in the South and shake its economy.

"It's obvious it's something that Kim Jong Il did. We already know Kim Jong Il has been preparing for this kind of incident," said Hwang Jang-yop, a former secretary of the North's Workers Party who once mentored Kim before defecting to Seoul in 1997, in an interview with Chosun Ilbo published Thursday. He didn't provide any evidence for his belief.

Two North Korean agents were arrested Tuesday for allegedly plotting to assassinate the 87-year-old Hwang who has openly condemned Kim's regime as totalitarian. Hwang has shrugged off the plot, saying he wasn't intimidated by it.

Seoul officials have said there has been no definitive evidence indicating the North's involvement yet. President Lee Myung-bak said earlier this week that South Korea would deal "resolutely and unwaveringly" with the outcome of an investigation into the sinking.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/04/21/report-skorea-warned-nkorean-submarine-attack/

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea may be preparing to carry out a third nuclear test, analysts and a high-ranking defector said Wednesday, citing language in state media hinting of an impending crisis on the peninsula.

Speculation that communist North Korea might conduct another nuclear test, in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, grew after the South Korean cable network YTN reported Tuesday that the North has been preparing since February to conduct a test in May or June. YTN cited an unidentified diplomatic source.

Tensions are high on the Korean peninsula in the wake of the deadly sinking of a South Korean navy ship near the maritime border with North Korea.

Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said he had no information to suggest preparations for a nuclear test were underway.

However, analysts and a former North Korean official said recent statements hint of preparations for another nuclear test.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters Wednesday that North Korea must come back to nuclear disarmament talks and fulfill its commitment to give up its nuclear programs.

"We will not accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state," Crowley said. "Its current path is a dead end."

He said that if the North meets its obligations, it can have a different relationship with the United States and the world.

Earlier this month, North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in comments carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency that the regime would "increase and modernize" its nuclear arsenal to defend against the United States.

"As long as the U.S. nuclear threat persists, we will increase and modernize various type nuclear weapons as deterrent" in the days ahead, an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

The Choson Sinbo, a Japan-based newspaper considered a mouthpiece for Pyongyang, warned earlier this month that the U.S. could face another crisis if Washington delays peace talks on formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War.

And on Wednesday evening, KCNA published a memo laying out the regime's nuclear policy — but vowing that it won't overproduce atomic weapons.

"It will manufacture nukes as much as it deems necessary but will neither participate in nuclear arms race nor produce them more than it feels necessary," the dispatch said. "It will join the international nuclear disarmament efforts with an equal stand with other nuclear weapons states.

The wording indicates that North Korea's regime is determined to possess nuclear weapons and wants to further strengthen leader Kim Jong Il's grip on power by showing to 24 million people that their leader is a strongman who can defy the U.S. pressure, a high-ranking defector told The Associated Press.

He said he served on the powerful Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party for more than a decade before defecting to the South. He asked that his name not be used due to the sensitivity of the matter.

North Korea cites the threat of a nuclear attack from the U.S. as a main reason behind its drive to build atomic weapons, and since last year has been pushing for a peace treaty. The U.S. keeps 28,500 troops in ally South Korea to deter any aggression from the North.

Pyongyang, which is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least a half-dozen weapons, conducted its first nuclear test in 2006.

After quitting disarmament-for-aid talks last year following U.N. Security Council condemnation of a long-range rocket launch, the regime carried out a second atomic test in May 2009. That prompted the Security Council to impose tough new sanctions, including a ban on all arms exports.

Yoon Deok-min, a professor at a state-run institute affiliated with South Korea's Foreign Ministry, said the North has been developing nuclear weapons according to its own schedule and could conduct a test any time to keep improving its atomic weapons.

However, Koh Yu-hwan, a professor at Seoul's Dongguk University, doubted North Korea would conduct another test, which would reduce its nuclear stockpile and risk further U.N. sanctions that could affect the survival of the regime.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said earlier this month that the United States knows the North has somewhere between one and six nuclear weapons. She did not elaborate.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/04/21/analysts-say-nkorea-hinting-rd-nuke-test/

The time as come to stand up against the North. To bad we don't have a President who has the guts or the experience to handle this situation.