North Korea calls for Seoul to change ‘policy of confrontation’

North Korea on Saturday marked the anniversary of a historic 2000 summit with South Korea, with state media urging Seoul to fundamentally change what it called a “policy of confrontation” against the communist nation.

The fist-ever inter-Korean summit touched off a flurry of economic and other cooperation projects, and the two sides held a second summit in 2007. But the reconciliation process came to a halt after a conservative government of former President Lee Myung-bak took office in Seoul with a hard-line policy on Pyongyang.

In a statement issued later Saturday, North Korea blamed South Korea for aborting joint inter-Korean events to celebrate the anniversary.

A spokesman for the North Side Committee for Implementing the June 15 Joint Declaration accused Seoul officials of foiling preparations for such events.

“From the beginning, (South Korea) opposed the opening of the joint events of the nation, claiming that such events are designed to ‘stir up conflict among South Koreans,’” a spokesman for the North’s committee said.

“Such obstructive moves are an open negation of the North-South joint declaration supported and approved by all Koreans and an unpardonable challenge to them calling for its implementation,” he said in a statement.

The statement was carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency in a report, monitored in Seoul.

Earlier in the day, the North’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper claimed that the policy of current South Korean President Park Geun-hye toward Pyongyang is no different from her predecessor.

“Unless there is a fundamental switchover in the policy of confrontation of the South’s ruling forces, dialogue and improvement in relations between the North and the South cannot be realized forever,” the newspaper said.

The paper also blamed the South for the recent breakdown of an agreement to hold high-level talks.

Earlier this month, North Korea surprised the South with a proposal to hold government-level talks, an about-face by a regime that had made near-daily war threats against Seoul and Washington while spurning repeated demands for talks to defuse tensions.

South Korea accepted the offer and the two sides agreed to hold two days of meetings in Seoul last week. But the agreement unraveled at the last minute as the sides failed to find a compromise over the level of chief delegates.

The North’s spokesman denounced South Korea for refusing to make the issue of the 2000 summit agreement part of the agenda for the high-level talks.

“All facts go to clearly prove that the ‘confidence-building process’ touted by (South Korea) is not a policy aimed to sincerely settle the inter-Korean relations but is nothing but rhetoric to mislead public opinion,” the spokesman said. “And they remain unchanged in their sinister intention to fan up confrontation and hostility.” (Yonhap News)