Pyongyang Lambasts New South Korean President

North Korea today unleashed a rhetorical tirade against the new South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, amid worries about renewed friction on the peninsula.

In its fiercest personal attack since Lee took power in February, Pyongyang's state media said the president's more assertive stance in talks on nuclear decommissioning would result in "catastrophic consequences."

In a shift from the "sunshine policy" of engagement pursued by his two predecessors, Lee says humanitarian assistance depends on the progress made by Pyongyang in dismantling its nuclear weapon's program. North Korea is furious that the two issues are being linked.

In commentary today, the communist party Rodong Sinmun newspaper labeled Lee a "political charlatan", an "absent-minded traitor" and a "US sycophant".

Hostilities are rising. Last week, Pyongyang test-fired three missiles and ordered South Korean officials to leave a shared industrial zone.

Military commanders in the south have talked hypothetically about targeting suspected North Korean nuclear facilities. In response, a North Korean military commentator warned at the weekend that the south would be reduced to "ashes" in a pre-emptive strike.

But the two sides are still far from the furious confrontations that marked much of the cold war.

Over the past 10 years of liberal rule in the South, Seoul and Pyongyang have moved closer toward reconciliation. They have held two summits, reconnected road and rail links and conducted a handful of reunions of divided families.

South Korea paid billions of dollars in aid to the north to improve relations, but the new conservative president, Lee, says economic assistance and food aid are conditional on improvements in human rights and nuclear decommissioning.

The North Korean newspaper said: "Lee's seizure of power created a thorn bush in the way of the inter-Korean relations," and warned he "should not misjudge the patience and silence so far kept [by the north]".Lee has proposed an aid package that he says would lift average incomes in the north from a few hundred dollars a year to $3,000, if northern political leaders were to make concessions. Pyongyang, however, has dismissed the plan as "piffle".