Not a day goes by without Pyongyang vilifying South Korea’s unification minister, Yu Woo-ik, one of the few doves in President Lee Myung-bak’s administration. It continues to excoriate Yu, calling him a jackass, a traitor and a confrontational fanatic ― a development that has broad implications for inter-Korean relations.

Pyongyang began to hurl epithets against Yu on Jan. 11, almost four months after South Korea’s former ambassador to Beijing was appointed as unification minister. On that day, Pyongyang posted an entry in its Internet propaganda website, describing him as a “scout for confrontation” (against North Korea) who it says is following the footsteps of his hard-line predecessor.

Until then, Pyongyang had not named Yu in its denunciation of the Lee administration. Instead, it had appeared to be approving of him tacitly when it omitted comments on the conciliatory measures he was taking, including permission to South Korean religious delegates to visit North Korea and expansion work to resume in the Gaeseong industrial complex for South Korean companies north of the Demilitarized Zone.

President Lee turned himself into a main target of disparagement when he withheld massive aid to North Korea from the beginning, demanding reciprocity. Inter-Korean relations reached a nadir when the North torpedoed a South Korean warship and bombarded a South Korean island in the West Sea in 2010.

But Lee attempted to change course when he selected Yu as his top policymaker on North Korea in September last year. At the same time, Lee reportedly was seeking to hold talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il for a turnaround in inter-Korean relations. But Lee’s hopes were dashed when Kim died in December.

Kim’s sudden death also deprived North Korea of an opportunity to secure massive aid from the South. Pyongyang apparently concluded that it would be better to wait until a new administration was inaugurated than negotiate aid terms with a reluctant Lee administration during its final year in office.

No wonder it stopped sparing Yu in its intensifying accusations against the Lee administration. Instead, North Korea attacked him on 31 occasions from Jan. 11 to Monday this week.

What the North is doing, however, is little different from tantrums being thrown by a miffed brat, as evidenced by an “open questionnaire” North Korea’s Defense Commission issued to the Lee administration last week.

What it presented as a key question was: What did the Lee administration think of its demand for an apology for what South Korea did with regard to condolences on Kim Jong-il’s death? Simply put, it was demanding that the Lee administration apologize for issuing departure permits only to a select few South Koreans that wanted to visit the North to express condolences.

Pyongyang might have felt offended when the Lee administration did not allow many delegates to visit the North. But did it really believe that the Lee administration owed an apology for what it did or did not do with regard to condolences?

Yu’s ministry expressed regrets about the demand, calling it an “unreasonable demand put forward presumably for the purpose of propaganda.” But to brush it aside, saying it did not merit any comment, would have been a better response, no matter for what purpose it was assumed to have been intended.

No less preposterous was a demand that South Korea enforce its commitment to denuclearization. In the same breath, it also said that South Korea was misguided in demanding denuclearization from the North. But which has a nuclear weapons program, the South or the North? Another farcical demand was for South Korea to refer never again to the torpedoing of a South Korean corvette and the shelling of Yeonpyeongdo.

Pyongyang may regard it a better strategy to wait until a more pliable administration emerges in South Korea, where the change of government is scheduled for next February. But one year without substantial aid from the South may prove to be long and painful for the cash-strapped, famine-ridden North. Moreover, there is no guarantee that the next administration will be more accommodating.