North Korea has released a scathing blow-by-blow account of a secret meeting held last month between officials of the two neighbouring Koreas, where the South "begged" and offered "envelopes of cash" for a series of three presidential summits over the next year.An unidentified front man for North Korea's powerful National Defence Commission said on Wednesday that bigwigs from both Koreas met in Beijing on May 9 for the secret meeting.
He named three South Korean officials from the presidential office, the intelligence service and the unification ministry who "humiliated themselves" in trying to "seduce" the North to agree to presidential summits.
The covert talks reportedly occurred on the same day that South Korean President Lee Myung-bak announced in Berlin, his willingness to invite his North Korean counterpart to the March 2012 nuclear summit if Kim Jong Il says he would give up his nuclear weapons program.
"If the Lee traitor group wills to improve inter-Korean relations, they should not have insulted us with such "Berlin offer" nor played theatrics by divulging information about the private meeting," he said.
"We will do all we can to ensure peace, unification and stablity on the Korean peninsula but we will no longer deal with the Lee Myung-bak traitor regime," the North Korean front man said.
The South's unification ministry called the commission front man's comments a "deeply regrettable ... unilateral claim that distorted our sincerity".
The presidential Blue House did not comment on the North Korean statement.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's "puppet regime" has repeatedly pleaded since April for a secret meeting to discuss possible talks to overcome recent deadly festivities and improve inter-Korean relations, the KCNA state news agency quoted the commission front man on Wednesday.