SEOUL: South Korea accused North Korea Monday of “deceptive” appeals for dialogue and said Pyongyang was determined to keep its nuclear weapons despite international efforts to revive disarmament talks. Seoul's Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek, in a strongly-worded speech at the start of a week of nuclear diplomacy, also accused Pyongyang of exaggerating its food shortage for political reasons. Four elder statesman including former US President Jimmy Carter are to visit the communist state this week for talks on reducing inter-Korean tensions, denuclearisation and food shortages. China's nuclear envoy Wu Dawei is due in Seoul Tuesday for separate talks on reviving long-stalled six-party talks on the North's nuclear disarmament. But Hyun, whose ministry handles cross-border affairs, blamed the North's “intransigence” for sour cross-border relations, which now “seem to be tangled in a tight knot”. Relations have been icy since Seoul accused Pyongyang of torpedoing a warship in March 2010 with the loss of 46 lives. It denies the charge but shelled a South Korean border island last November, killing four people including civilians. “At such a time, we can be neither pessimistic nor optimistic about the future of inter-Korea relations. It seems the Korean peninsula is now at an ‘inflection point',” Hyun said in a speech to European business leaders, without elaborating. “The root cause of such uncertainty is the North's intransigence.” The minister said Pyongyang's overtures this year “appeared to be a classic case of North Korea's deceptive ‘peace offensive'”, which he termed a worn-out tactic. He said the North's political, economic and social circumstances were much more unstable than in the early 1990s when current leader Kim Jong-Il inherited power from his own father. Leader Kim is now preparing for an eventual succession by his own son Kim Jong-Un. There seemed “nearly no hope” for the North's state-directed economy, Hyun said. But despite unprecedented appeals for international food aid, Hyun said the North's food shortage was not particularly worse this year and there appeared to be some political motivation for the pleas. Some Seoul officials say the North is trying to stockpile food before a major anniversary next year. – Agence France
