[Breaking News]
North condemns Cheonan report as "fabricated," "foolish"

Condemning the conclusion by an international team of experts that a North Korean torpedo attacked the warship Cheonan as “fabricated,” the communst country's powerful National Defense Commission said today it would send a team of inspectors to get a first-hand look at evidence.

In a spokesman statement, the commission threatened to take “strong measures, including an all-out war,” if South Korea imposes any sanctions on North Korea.

The North Korean statement called the South Korean attempt to link the Cheonan sinking to North Korea “foolish.”

Late last night, the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said that the "South Korean puppet group" is using the sinking as a "golden opportunity for pushing North-South relations to a catastrophe."

"Making the fiction that the accident 'was caused by the North' a fait accompli from its beginning, the group cried out for 'countermeasures' and 'retaliation,'" the committee claimed.

"The puppet group is seriously mistaken if it thinks it can weather the crisis and prove successful in the upcoming elections to local self-governing bodies by misleading public opinion through such trite campaigning as straining the situation and bedeviling the inter-Korean relations."

By Yoo Jee-ho, Staff Reporter [jeeho@joongang.co.kr]