By Bernama
Seoul : North Korea slammed Tuesday South Korean President Lee Myung-bak for the first time since he took office in February, warning the Lee administration will face “irrevocable catastrophic consequences” from inter-Korean confrontation, Yonhap news agency reported.
The denunciation follows the North’s threats over the past week to turn South Korea into ashes and delay disablement of its nuclear facilities. North Korea has also expelled all South Korean officials from the joint industrial complex in Kaesong, a North Korean border town, and test-fired several missiles into the West Sea.
It also comes amid reports that Pyongyang is trying to influence South Korea’s April 9 general elections, in which Lee’s conservative Grand National Party is expected to win a majority according to recent public surveys.
The Rodong Shinmun, organ of the North Korean Workers’ Party, called the president “a traitor,” “a sycophant towards the United States” and “an anti-North confrontation advocator” in a lengthy article by an unnamed commentator.
Lee, who took office on Feb. 25, is the first conservative South Korean president in a decade. He has taken a tougher line toward Pyongyang, vowing to improve the alliance with Washington and link aid to progress in the international efforts to resolve the dispute over North Korea’s nuclear programmes. However, until now, the North had refrained from officially criticising him.
“The Lee Myung-bak regime of the Grand National Party that emerged in South Korea recently is becoming undisguised in its sycophancy towards the U.S. and confrontation with the DPRK blatantly swimming against the trend of the era of independent reunification,” said the article carried by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency.
DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name.
“Lee’s seizure of power created a thorn bush in the way of the inter-Korean relations and this cannot but have an adverse impact on the situation in and around the Korean Peninsula,” the article said.
It said the North will “have no option but to change its approach toward the South” if “traitor Lee Myung-bak” opts for inter-Korean confrontation and ignores the 2000 and 2007 summit agreements between Seoul and Pyongyang for peace and cooperation.
The article titled “What the South Korean authorities will get from the anti-North confrontation is only destruction” warned Lee not to “act rashly,” calling on him to look closely at the current situation.
“The Lee regime will be held fully accountable for the irrevocable catastrophic consequences to be entailed by the freezing of the inter-Korean relations and the disturbance of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula,” it stressed.
The six-party talks on ending Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions are now stalled over North Korea’s reluctance to present a “complete and correct” declaration of its nuclear programs and alleged provision of nuclear technology to Syria.
The newspaper reiterated Pyongyang’s position that the communist state owns “a nuclear deterrent” to ensure its safety from possible outside attacks and claimed Seoul is partly responsible for the current crisis because it has “danced to the tune of the U.S. nuclear war maneuvers.”
The North also criticiSed Lee’s major North Korea policies, including his pledge to help improve the struggling North Korean economy, and “pragmatic diplomacy.”
Lee’s vow to assist North Korea raise its annual per-capita gross national income to US$3,000 if the country scraps its nuclear programs and opens itself to the outer world is “foolish,” the North said, adding “Such sophism is nothing but the most despicable jargon and a daydream.”
Demanding the communist state give up its nuclear programmes as a precondition for aid would only block a resolution of the dispute and is “nothing but declaring a war” as well as a denial of inter-Korean relations and peace, the article said.
It also said Lee’s efforts to address the issue of the North’s human rights is “a deliberate political provocation.”
“Lee’s accusations against the DPRK over its ‘human rights situation’ is a deliberate political provocation to incite hostility and mistrust between fellow countrymen and push the North-South relations to those of confrontation,” the North said.
“There can be no human rights problem in our own people-oriented system of socialism,” the North added.