North Korea's military said Thursday it will no longer seek talks with South Korea over what it called Seoul's reluctance to ease hostility, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.
The statement came a day after the first meeting between the countries' militaries in nearly half a year collapsed despite high anticipation.
In a bulletin carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency that was quoted by Yonhap, the North's delegation to the two-day colonel-level talks said its South Korean counterpart "unilaterally walked out" after refusing to compromise on ways to hold higher-level defense talks.
"The army and people of the North do not feel any need to deal with the group of traitors any longer now that they do not wish to see the North-South relations improved but totally reject the dialogue itself," the North Korean delegation said.
The South Korean Defense Ministry earlier said Seoul would agree to ministerial talks only if North Korea admits its guilt and apologizes for the sinking of a South Korean warship in March 2010 that an international investigation blamed on the North and the artillery strike on the South's Yeonpyeong Island in November.
North and South Korea remain technically at war, since no peace treaty was signed following the Korean War in 1953. The Demilitarized Zone between the countries is the most heavily armed border in the world.
MOSCOW, February 10 (RIA Novosti)
