The warship "Cheonan" sank on the night of March 26, 2010 in the West Sea of Korea while it was involved in the joint military exercises with the U.S. forces, the statement noted, and continued:

But the truth about the case has not yet been probed and the authorities have failed to release any trustworthy result of the investigation.

No sooner had the case occurred than the Lee Myung Bak group of traitors plugged the U.S. and its allies into the investigation, linking it with the DPRK.

In this course the group shifted the blame for the case onto the north, insisting that parts of the torpedo it claimed salvaged from the bottom of the sea belong to the north.

In this connection the DPRK clarified the stand that it would dispatch an inspection group of the DPRK National Defence Commission to the scene where the incident took place for the purpose of verifying the evidence produced by the group.

Upset by this, the group refused to accept the proposal of the DPRK and took the "May 24 step" of totally freezing the north-south relations.

In order to restore the confidence between the south and the north, it is necessary to properly probe the truth about the case and to this end the north should be allowed to participate in the joint investigation without fail, the statement held.