And this is what the KCNA has to say about the Chonan announcement

As if any of this is a surprise:

A spokesman for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) issued a statement on Friday assailing the south Korean puppet forces for releasing extremely provocative "results of the investigation" into the sinking of a warship of the south Korean puppet navy in a bid to hurl mud at the north.

The statement noted that the publication of the above-said "results of the investigation" is another extremely ridiculous charade staged by the puppet group in a bid to hurt the dignity of the DPRK, steadily tighten the "sanctions" against it, harm and suffocate it in conspiracy with its U.S. and Japanese masters, much upset by the might of the Republic advancing by leaps and bounds toward a thriving nation.

I think it's quite notable that they included Japan in this list of South Korea's masters. Looks like they're partying like it's 1949 up there. Seriously, that's a bit of a rarity, and it may indicate that Pyongyang is nervous about Tokyo potentially joining any action against Pyongyang.

The drumbeat goes on:

The Lee Myung Bak group, while working with bloodshot eyes to escalate confrontation with fellow countrymen, drew the conclusion from the day the case occurred that the warship was "sunken by the north" and has since conducted intensive investigation on its basis to hatch a plot, the statement said, and went on:

In the course of nearly two month-long investigation the puppet group fabricated what it called "circumstantial evidence" with conjecture, supposition and random guess. It just produced fragments and pieces of aluminum whose origin remains unknown as "evidence," becoming the target of derision.

Right there... right there is where you have the chinboista fifth-column canned response. Right there. Oh, and I love the part about Lee Myungbak's bloodshot eyes. As if those things are wide enough for anybody to recognize any color inside them.

Greatly irony is that it deliberately linked the case with the north, talking about the results of the analysis of composition of the unidentified "evidence" without any marking and its size and type.

This is nothing but a shameful deed of those keen on escalating the confrontation with the north.

The Lee group's assertion that the above-said case is linked with the north is the last-ditch effort of those who face destruction as it is a premeditated and deliberate plot to tide over a serious crisis created due to the total failure of its domestic and foreign policies and smoothly stage the "elections to the local self-governing bodies" in a bid to maintain the fascist rule and bring the inter-Korean relations to a collapse.

That sounds eerily like what the North is trying to do. Project much?

The puppet forces are now kicking up such fuss as creating atmosphere reminiscent of a wartime situation in south Korea, blustering they would not "rule out a war" and crying out for "counter-measures", urgently evacuating the personnel, equipment and materials of the south side from the areas of the north side and issuing top secret order for taking steps for personal safety and making preparations for withdrawal.

This racket reminding one of an eve of a war goes to prove that the group's recent publication of the "results of investigation" was not a mere clarification of the sinking of the warship but a carefully calculated provocation to seek a pretext for igniting a war of aggression against the north together with outside forces.

The puppet group has created such grave situation on the Korean Peninsula that a war may break out right now.

Pursuant to the statement issued by a spokesman for the National Defence Commission, the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea solemnly declares as follows, speaking for the DPRK government authorities:

Firstly, from now on the DPRK will regard the present situation as the phase of a war and decisively handle all matters arising in the inter-Korean relations to cope with it.

Secondly, in case the puppet group opts for "counter-action" and "retaliation" under the pretext of the sinking of the warship, the DPRK will strongly react to them with such merciless punishment as the total freeze of the inter-Korean relations, the complete abrogation of the north-south agreement on non-aggression and a total halt to the inter-Korean cooperation undertakings.

The DPRK will never pardon anyone hurting its supreme dignity and doing harm to it, warned the statement.

So if we take this at face value, then North Korea geared-up for an expected attack by the South.

It would seem then, that if the North was really behind this for the purposes of ratcheting up inter-Korean tensions in order to distract the DPRK citizenry from all the economic problems swirling around them, they have successfully snatched this opportunity back from the South, which had demonstrated its refusal to play along by painstakingly analyzing the situation instead of immediately reacting.

Apologies for that run-on sentence. I've been reading too many KCNA reports.