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North and South Korea ended their first military talks in a year without progress on Thursday, after which North Korean media called the South’s president “a despicable human scum whom no one can trust or deal with”.The working-level talks, which were proposed by the North last week, were welcomed by the South as an olive branch. The North had cut off inter-Korean dialogue after Lee Myung-bak took office as the South’s president in February, pledging to get tougher with the Communist state.The meeting was held as Christopher Hill, US assistant secretary of state, extended his stay in Pyongyang to try to save the crumbling international deal to denuclearise North Korea. The intra-Korean meeting, which was held at the truce village of Panmunjom that straddles the North-South Korean border, lasted only an hour and a half. The South demanded that Pyongyang stop personal insults against Mr Lee, while the North demanded an apology over the spreading of propaganda leaflets in the North by South Korean human rights groups, Seoul’s defence ministry said.Seoul also called for a full resumption of North-South dialogue and measures to guarantee the safety of tourists at a South-backed resort in the North. It asked the North to address problems faced by tourists and businessmen when crossing the heavily armed border.Immediately after the meeting ended, the North’s official media issued another personal attack against Mr Lee after previously calling him a “traitor” and “sycophant to the US”.Inter-Korean relations chilled further after a South Korean tourist was shot dead by a North Korean soldier near the Mt Kumgang resort in July.The two sides did not discuss the North’s nuclear problems and Seoul did not raise the issue of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s health at the meeting, the defence ministry said.Mr Hill is expected to come back to Seoul after meeting North Korean officials to try to persuade them not to reactivate the Yongbyon nuclear plant. Washington and Pyongyang are at loggerheads over how to verify North Korea’s nuclear declaration.As in the days of Noah....
