North Korea rejects liaison office proposal from South Korea

In this Sunday, April 20, 2008 file photo, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak reviews honor guards upon his arrival at Haneda international airport in Tokyo. North Korea rejected a proposal from South Korea's new conservative president to establish liaison offices in both countries calling it a public relations exercise aimed at covering up deteriorating ties on the divided peninsula. President Lee Myung-bak's idea of setting up the liaison offices in Pyongyang and Seoul was "anti-unification garbage," the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a report carried by the Korean Central News Agency on Saturday, ,April 26, 2008. (AP Photo/Toshifumi Kitamura, File)

SEOUL, South Korea—North Korea rejected a proposal from South Korea's new conservative president to establish liaison offices in both countries calling it a public relations exercise aimed at covering up deteriorating ties on the divided peninsula.

President Lee Myung-bak's idea of setting up the liaison offices in Pyongyang and Seoul was "anti-unification garbage," the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a report carried by the Korean Central News Agency on Saturday.

The proposal was Lee's first overture to the communist nation.

As soon as Lee's government came to power "it adopted confrontation with the (North) as a policy and worked hard to overturn everything achieved" since the inter-Korean reconciliation process began, the paper said.

The liaison office proposal is "nothing but a poor trick to escape mounting criticism at home and abroad, evade the responsibility for the strained North-South relations," the paper said, describing Lee as an "imbecile and political somnambulist."

Lee made the offer in an interview with the Washington Post last week during a visit to the United States for talks with President Bush, saying the countries need a better channel of communication.

Kim Ho-nyeon, a spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry, declined to comment on the report. "We're aware of that, but it's just a Rodong Sinmun commentary and we will not react to this," he said.

Relations between the divided Koreas have chilled since Lee took office in February with a pledge to get tough on Pyongyang. Lee says he opposes unconditional assistance to the North and calls for its nuclear disarmament as a precondition for economic cooperation.

North Korea has bristled at the hard-line stance, and since late last month has expelled South Korean officials from a shared industrial complex, test-fired missiles, and threatened to reduce the South to "ashes."

The Korean War ended in 1953 with a truce, not a peace treaty, which means the two sides technically remain at war. Relations improved significantly under Lee's two liberal predecessors -- Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun -- who pursued detente with North Korea with massive aid and concessions.