By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea unleashed a torrent ofinsults at South Korea's new president on Tuesday in a firstmention of Lee Myung-bak since he won a December election witha pledge to get tough on his communist neighbour.
In the last week the North has test-fired missiles,expelled South Korean officials working at a joint factory parkin the North and threatened to reduce South Korea to ashes in ashow of anger at Lee and the South's ally, the United States.
North Korea called Lee, who took office in February, a"political charlatan", an "absent minded traitor" and a "U.S.sycophant" in a commentary in the communist party Rodong Sinmunnewspaper carried by its KCNA news agency.
Lee's government has told Pyongyang that if it wants tokeep receiving aid, it should improve human rights, abide by aninternational nuclear deal and start returning the more than1,000 Southerners kidnapped or held since the 1950-53 KoreanWar.
The stand has infuriated the testy North, used to billionsof dollars of aid over the past 10 years from Lee'sleft-of-centre predecessors whose "sunshine policy" soughtlittle in return.
"The Lee Myung-bak regime will be held totally responsiblefor ushering in a catastrophic incident by freezing North-Southrelations and destroying peace and stability on the Koreanpeninsula through its pro-U.S., anti-North Koreaconfrontational attempts," the commentary said.
DEFLECT BLAME
With its taunts, analysts said the North may be trying todeflect blame from itself for a delay in implementing a dealwith regional powers to scrap a nuclear arms programme inexchange for massive aid and an end to its internationalostracism.
The North failed to meet an end-of-2007 deadline in asix-country deal to release a complete accounting of itsnuclear material and weaponry, as well as answer U.S.suspicions of having a secret programme to enrich uranium forweapons.
The deal is what the international community hopes willeventually lead to a complete nuclear disarming of the North.
"The North has shifted to blaming the South for what it hasnot been able to work out with the U.S.," said Choi Jin-wook,an expert on the North at the South's Korea Institute forNational Unification.
Lee's government has said it would work closely with theUnited States and Japan, and its stance on North Korea putsSouth Korea closer to its traditional allies in trying to exertpressure on the North to force change.
The chief U.S. envoy to the North Korean nuclear talks isscheduled to arrive in Seoul later on Tuesday.
Lee has proposed an aid package for North Korea that wouldlift per capita income from a few hundred dollars a year to$3,000, provided it abides by the six-way nuclear deal.
The North called Lee's plan "piffle" and said it "will beable to live as well as it wishes without any help from theSouth as it did in the past".
Analysts said that China, the closest the North has to amajor ally, would lean on the hermit state to prevent thesituation on the Korean peninsula spinning out of control.
Beijing, already facing criticism for its handling of thecrises in Tibet and Sudan, does not want North Korea to beanother headache and spoil its hosting of the 2008 SummerOlympics, they said.
(Additional reporting by Yoo Choonsik, Park Jung-youn andLee Jiyeon; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher and David Fox)
