North Korea has broken its months-long silence on South Korea's new conservative government, criticizing the Lee Myung-bak administration's tougher line on the North. It is expected to darken prospects for inter-Korean relations and resolving the international standoff over the North's nuclear issue.

The North had refrained from commenting on the new South Korean administration, a rare move that many North Korea experts said was aimed at cementing ties with the South to sustain South Korean-backed cross-border projects agreed upon during the second inter-Korean summit in October last year.

Following South Korea's call on North Korea to improve its human rights situation during a United Nations session early last week, however, the communist regime began issuing a series of statements denouncing the Lee administration.

In Friday's statement issued by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, the mouthpiece of the North's ruling Workers' Party, Pyongyang called ``ruling conservative forces'' in the South the ``descendants of the previous dictatorial governments that ruined human rights.''

``Recently, the conservative ruling forces of the (South) took issue at the seventh U.N. Human Rights Council with a so-called `human rights problem,' that does not even exist,'' the committee said. ``We strongly reject the remarks, which we shall brand as ignominious speech that forces the North and South into confrontation and completely negates the spirit of the June 15 joint declaration.''

The June 15 declaration refers to a landmark inter-Korean pact signed between former President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during the first-ever inter-Korean summit talks in 2000.

The declaration calling for peaceful reunification through cross-border exchanges and economic cooperation is widely regarded as having laid the groundwork for reconciliation between the two Koreas, which are technically still at war.

Conservative forces, however, have downplayed the declaration, which they see as having helped the North develop its nuclear weapons program with financial support from the South.

On Monday, Park In-kook, South Korea's chief delegate at the U.N. council in Geneva, urged North Korea to take ``appropriate measures'' to address its human rights abuses in his keynote speech.

The remark was just a single sentence, but many North Korea experts here and abroad saw it to represent a major change in South Korea's approach toward the North after a decade in which the previous liberal governments refrained from criticizing its northern brethren, fearful of harming their ``sunshine'' policy of engaging the communist regime.

Right after winning the Dec. 19 election, Lee promised he would not shy away from hesitating to criticize North Korea's ``shortcomings,'' including its human rights abuses.

The Stalinist regime has long been accused of human rights abuses such as public executions, political prison camps, torture and restricting freedom of expression and religious practice.

The Tongil Shinbo, an weekly newspaper North Korea publishes for Korean residents abroad, also joined the criticism of Seoul Saturday, urging the South to ``cooperate with the North more than with foreign forces.''

The comment was construed as an expression of the North's discontent over President Lee's pledge to put a more priority on cooperation with the United States in handling North Korean issues than on direct contact with the North.

Lee has made it clear that his government will see the North Korean issue as a foreign policy issue, not merely an inter-Korean issue.

He also said unlike the previous governments, Seoul will link aid programs for North Korea to progress at six-party talks aimed at scrapping the North's nuclear program.

His flagship ``Vision 3000'' North Korea policy is designed to provide conditional economic assistance to the North over the next decade in cooperation with the international community to help boost Pyongyang's per capita national income to $3,000.


source-koreatimes