In a statement carried Saturday by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, a spokesperson for the North Korean Foreign Ministry said South Korea remains "an invariable enemy state obsessed with hostility and confrontation" and vowed that Pyongyang's policy toward Seoul would not change.
"Whatever the Seoul rulers say and do, the DPRK will deem it a challenge and remain unchanged in its principle of confronting the enemy aimed to definitely treat the ROK as a hostile state," the statement said.
The criticism came three days after Lee met European leaders in Brussels and adopted a joint statement that strongly condemned what it described as illegal military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, reaffirmed that Pyongyang would never be recognized as a nuclear-weapon state under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and called for improvements in North Korea's human rights situation.
The North denounced the declaration as "a clear infringement on the sovereignty of our state and a grave hostile act," arguing that Seoul had discarded its previously stated principles of mutual respect and non-hostility.
The statement singled out Lee, accusing him of removing what it called a "bothersome mask of peace" and exposing the true nature of South Korea's policy toward the North.
"Through this confrontational declaration, the chief executive of the ROK voluntarily proved before the world that there can never be 'peaceful coexistence' between the DPRK and the ROK and that hostile relations will remain forever," it said.
The North further described South Korea as Washington's "dagger" for advancing U.S. interests in Asia and claimed Seoul could not exist without hostility and confrontation toward Pyongyang.
The remarks underscore North Korea's continued adherence to leader Kim Jong Un's "hostile two states" doctrine, under which inter-Korean relations are no longer treated as a special national relationship but as relations between two separate and hostile countries.
Seoul downplayed the significance of the North's reaction.
A senior presidential official accompanying Lee on his European trip said the language contained in the South Korea-EU statement merely reflected positions that Seoul had long maintained.
"Our stance on North Korea-Russia military cooperation, North Korea's nuclear program and human rights issues has not changed," the official told reporters in Rome on Friday. "There is nothing new in the statement, and we do not see it creating any additional burden in relations with Russia or North Korea."
The exchange nevertheless marks the first public friction between Lee's signature policy of peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula and Pyongyang's increasingly hardline position that the two Koreas are permanently hostile states.
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