Pyongyang has announced it will sever all relations with Seoul, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said on Tuesday.
In a statement issued by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, the North said it would not engage in any inter-Korean dialogue or contact as long as South Korean President Lee Myung-bak remains in office.
North Korea also said it would cut all communication links with its southern neighbor and expel all South Korean personnel from the inter-Korean industrial complex in the North's border town of Kaesong.
The relations between the two countries soured after Seoul accused North Korea of firing a torpedo from a submarine at the 1,200-ton South Korean Cheonan corvette. The vessel sank near the disputed Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea on March 26 causing the loss of 46 lives.
North Korea reacted angrily last week to the accusations, saying it would withdraw from the nonaggression pact with South Korea if Seoul continued to accuse Pyongyang of sinking one of its warships.
The two countries remain technically at war as their 1950-1953 conflict ended only in an armistice. Naval clashes between the South and the North over the disputed sea border took place in 1999, 2002 and last year.
The conclusions of the investigation led to a further deterioration of the already sour relations between the two Koreas and have jeopardized international efforts to stop Pyongyang's controversial nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development programs.
Talks on North Korea's nuclear program, involving Russia, Japan, China, the United States and the two Koreas, stalled last April when Pyongyang pulled out of the negotiations in protest against the United Nations' condemnation of its missile tests.
North Korea, which is subject to international sanctions over its nuclear program, has warned Seoul of a stern response if the South retaliated with new sanctions against Pyongyang over the alleged attack on its warship.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called on Tuesday on his South Korean counterpart to show restraint and not allow the situation on the Korean peninsula to escalate.
MOSCOW, May 25 (RIA Novosti)
