South Korea starts hoisting sunken warship with 44 missing sailors believed trapped inside

South Korea starts hoisting sunken warship

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea began lifting its sunken warship Thursday in waters near the tense border with North Korea, about three weeks after it went down following a mysterious explosion with dozens of sailors believed trapped inside.

Bad weather and heavy seas have impeded efforts to locate the 44 missing crew and salvage the wreckage of the 1,200-ton Cheonan.

On Thursday, a huge naval crane started hoisting the stern, where most of the missing sailors are believed trapped. Footage by TV broadcaster SBS showed the stern’s upper part appearing on the sea surface, while workers used hoses to pump water out of it to lessen its weight.

Fully retrieving the stern, moving it onto a barge and searching for the missing crew were expected to take 11 hours. The stern is to be moved to a naval base to investigate the cause of the explosion while the rest of the ship is to be salvaged as early as next week, military officials said.

Fifty-eight crew members were rescued shortly after the Cheonan split into two after exploding March 26 during a routine patrol. Divers have recovered two bodies.

No cause has been determined. There has been some suspicion but no confirmation of North Korean involvement in the sinking, which occurred near the two Koreas’ disputed western sea border — a scene of three bloody inter-Korean naval battles.

South Korean officials have said they will look into all possibilities including that the ship might have been struck by a North Korean torpedo or a mine left over from the 1950-53 Korean War. The conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, thus leaving the Koreas still technically at war.

In Washington, the top U.S. diplomat for Asia told reporters Wednesday that the push for a resumption of stalled North Korean nuclear disarmament talks should take a back seat to an investigation into the blast.

Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said that the top U.S. priority is to work with South Korea on the recovery of the ship. He said that “at that point we’ll be able to make some judgments about the way forward” on nuclear talks.

North Korean officials have reportedly denied their country’s involvement in the blast. Last week, the Dong-a Ilbo newspaper in Seoul reported that North Korea military delegates told Chinese officials during their trip to Beijing that Pyongyang was not behind the ship’s explosion.

The sinking was one of South Korea’s worst naval disasters. In 1974, a ship sank off the southeast coast in stormy weather, killing 159 sailors and coast guard personnel. In 1967, 39 sailors were killed by North Korean artillery.

South Korea has asked the U.S., Australia, the Britain and Sweden to send experts for a joint investigation. A team of eight U.S. investigators, led by Rear Admiral Thomas J. Eccles, arrived in South Korea earlier this week, according to South Korea’s Defense Ministry.

One South Korean military diver has died during a rescue operation and a South Korean fishing boat that participated in the search went missing. Two of the fishermen’s bodies were recovered and seven other crew are missing.