N. Korea blasts S. Korean president over New Year message

SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Yonhap) -- North Korea on Sunday denounced South Korean President
Lee Myung-bak for what it claimed to be Seoul's continued attempt to incite
confrontation between the divided Koreas.
The North's criticism of Lee, the first of its kind this year, came after the
South Korean president said his government is fully prepared to talk with the
communist North.
"The government will work calmly and flexibly to resolve the current stalemate in
inter-Korean relations," Lee said in his New Year's national address last Friday.
He also urged Pyongyang to abandon what he called its "outdated practice" of
trying to create tension between conservative and liberal factions of South
Korea, and instead become more cooperative.
The Tongil Shinbo, Pyongyang's weekly magazine that is widely viewed as the
country's overseas propaganda outlet, claimed Lee was only trying to pass the
buck, according to the North's Internet-based news outlet, Uriminzokkiri, a
Korean phrase meaning "only by Koreans ourselves."
Lee's remarks, the magazine claimed, "revealed an attempt to pass off the
responsibility for the worsened North-South relationship and continue pursuing an
offensive anti-DPRK policy this year." DPRK stands for the North's official name,
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The magazine also claimed it is South Korea that needs to change or give up its
old habits.
"A change must come from South Korea by sweeping out the entire group of
traitors," it said.
Pyongyang has virtually cut off all official dialogue with Seoul since the Lee
Myung-bak administration was inaugurated in early 2008. The two Koreas
technically remain at war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended only with an armistice,
not a peace treaty.
bdk@yna.co.kr
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