North Korea swiftly reports Obama's victory: Yonhap

SEOUL (Reuters) - Reclusive North Korea made its first official mention of the U.S. presidential election result in a state radio broadcast two days after the fact that simply said Barack Obama had won, the South's Yonhap news said on Saturday.

The short radio report on Friday said Democratic Senator Barack Hussein Obama, 47-years-old and black, beat Republican candidate John McCain by a large margin, without offering any commentary, according to the report monitored by Yonhap.

It is rare for North Korean media to broadcast the outcome of a U.S. presidential election so swiftly way. Obama's victory came on Wednesday, local time, in North Korea.

In November 2000, it took North Korea 10 days to report on the election victory of George W. Bush and it waited until late February in 2001 to comment on the win by warning that his hardline policy would cause serious problems for a defunct agreement aimed at suspending the North's nuclear program.

When Bush was re-elected for a second term in 2004, North Korea delivered the news five days later. It has harshly criticized his team, saying "bloodthirsty beasts" in his administration were hell-bent on bringing down its leaders.

On Friday, a pro-North Korea newspaper published in Japan said the election of Obama meant the Korean peninsula was entering "a new phase."

North Korea is locked in sputtering talks to end its nuclear arms program in return for aid and diplomatic incentives.

The United States took the communist state off its terrorism blacklist in October after the two countries agreed on a series of measures to verify Pyongyang's nuclear program.

Senior U.S. diplomats held substantive talks with a North Korean official in Washington about moving forward with the process of disarming the North, the State Department said on Friday.

(Reporting by Kim Yeon-hee; Editing by Jon Herskovitz and Alex Richardson)