N. Korea denounces S. Korea's dialogue offer as 'cunning ploy'



North Korea on Sunday denounced an offer of dialogue by South Korean President Park Geun-hye to defuse tensions on the Korean Peninsula as a "cunning ploy," implicitly rejecting any dialogue with Seoul for the time being.



The North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea made the remarks days after Park offered to engage in dialogue with Pyongyang, saying she was willing to "activate the trust-building process" on the peninsula.



Park offered talks as operations at an inter-Korean industrial park in the North's border city of Kaesong grounded to a halt last week. Pyongyang banned South Korean managers from entering the park on April 3 amid sky-high tensions over weeks of warlike threats from North Korea.



The offer of dialogue is "a cunning ploy to hide the South's policy of confrontation and mislead its responsibility for putting the Kaesong Industrial Complex into a crisis," said a spokesman for the North's committee in an article carried by the North's state news agency.



The North's committee also described the South's offer of dialogue as an "empty shell," but stressed that it will be up to South Korea whether or not inter-Korean dialogue could happen in the future. (Yonhap News)