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South Korea has retrieved the bow of a sunken warship that exploded mysteriously last month in disputed waters near North Korea, leaving 46 sailors dead or missing and hiking already-high tension between the two countries. A body also was recovered.

Investigators say the blast was from an external source, not mechanical failure on the boat itself. South Korea hasn't outright accused the North of torpedoing its ship, but unnamed intelligence officials have suggested it in media reports. The North has denied it.

A unnamed South Korean official told the country's Yonhap news agency today that evidence of damage on the ship's retrieved bow supports the theory of an external blast.

South Korea raises bow of sunken warship

Jin Sung-chul, Yonhap, AP

A giant offshore crane salvages the sunken South Korean naval ship Cheonan on Saturday, a month after it sank following a mysterious explosion that left 46 sailors dead or missing.

"The way a hatch [near where the ship split in two] had been thrown off its hinge indicates there had been a very strong external impact," the official was quoted as saying. The ship's smoke stack and radar were also missing from the wreckage, Yonhap said.

A huge floating crane loaded the second half of the ship onto a barge in the Yellow Sea this morning, after the stern was retrieved last week. The mangled wreckage is being towed to a nearby base, where it'll also be examined by outside experts from the U.S., Australia and Sweden.

South Korean officers also today recovered the body of a dead sailor, bringing the total of confirmed dead to 40. Six others remain missing.

Fifty-eight sailors were rescued after an unexplained explosion ripped apart their naval vessel, the 1,200-ton Cheonan, while it was on a routine patrol in disputed waters near North Korea on March 26th. It was one of South Korea's worst naval disasters.

Suspicions that the North could have been involved have hurt already poor relations between the two countries, amid a row over North Korea's disputed nuclear program and speculation that the country's leader, Kim Jong-Il, is in poor health and may be preparing to transfer power to his son.

President Barack Obama's special envoy to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, said today that the South Korean's ship's sinking exacerbates mistrust over the nuclear issue.

"We of course face a set of uncertainties in the short-term as we await the results of the investigation of the sinking of the South Korean naval vessel," Bosworth said in comments carried by several news agencies. "But looking beyond that I think that there is reason to believe that multilateral engagement remains the essential condition for making progress on greater stability, denuclearization, peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula."

North and South Korea are technically still at war, after the 1950-53 Korean war ended without a peace treaty. There have been three previous naval clashes in the same area as where the Cheonan went down, off the western coast of the Korean peninsula.

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South Korea Raises Bow of Sunken Warship

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