N. Korea calls for S. Korea to change 'policy of confrontation'

North Korea on Saturday marked the anniversary of a 2000 summit agreement with South Korea, with state media urging Seoul to fundamentally change what it calls a "policy of confrontation" against the communist nation.

The summit agreement, known as the June 15 South-North Joint Declaration, came at the end of their first-ever summit in 2000. In the accord, the two sides pledged to seek greater exchanges and cooperation across one of the world's most heavily fortified borders.

The summit touched off a flurry of economic and other cooperation projects, and the two sides held their second-ever summit in 2007. But the reconciliation process came to a halt after conservative former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office with a hard-line policy on Pyongyang.

On Saturday, the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper claimed that the North Korea policy of the current South Korean President Park Geun-hye is no different from her predecessor.

"Unless there is a fundamental switchover in the policy of confrontation of the South's ruling forces, dialogue and improvement in relations between the North and the South cannot be realized forever," it said.

It also blamed the South for the recent breakdown of an agreement to hold high-level talks.

Last week, North Korea surprised the South with an out of the blue proposal to hold government-level talks, an abrupt about-face by a regime that had made near-daily war threats against Seoul and Washington while spurning repeated demands for talks to defuse tensions.

South Korea accepted the offer and the two sides agreed to hold two days of meetings in Seoul from this past Wednesday. But the agreement unraveled at the last minute as the sides failed to find a compromise over the level of chief delegates. (Yonhap News)