N.Korea hurls insults, bars more South officials

By Jonathan Thatcher

SEOUL (Reuters) - An irascible North Korea on Thursday marked the latest triumph by the South's main conservative party with a string of fresh insults and, according to one media report, expelled a South Korean official.

South Korea, where the day before President Lee Myung-bak's party won a majority in a parliamentary election, ignored the jibes and said it was ready to wait, and wait, for its communist neighbor to come around to serious discussions.

But late in the day, Yonhap news agency reported that Pyongyang had told an official, who was working at the South Korean-run Mount Kumgang resort just inside the North, to leave.

Pyongyang, barely able to feed its people, has taken angry exception to what it sees as Lee's patronizing offer to help it lift its economy out of ruin.

It called Lee's pledge to raise North Korean per capita income to $3,000 "a product of the plot hatched by this crafty profiteer and swindler against (North Korea)."

"The Lee group had better stop peddling the above-said nonsensical phraseology only to become the laughing stock of the world people but mind its own business," its communist party Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary.

Analysts say that after 10 years of administrations in the South willing to largely turn a blind eye to its activities and pour in aid, the Pyongyang government is struggling to work out how to respond to a more hard-line attitude by Lee's government.

"Lee's offer to raise the North Korean standard of living was either colossally tactless or it was made with the intention of making things difficult for the ... (North Korean) regime," said Brian Myers, a specialist on the North's propaganda at Dongseo University.

"Pyongyang is well aware that what Lee Myung-bak says is going to get around North Korea sooner or later. In that sense it was perhaps natural that the North would react allergically to this."

In recent weeks, the communist state's media has hurled threats and taunts but, so far, the South has only asked its neighbor to tone down its language and focus on important issues, notably moves to eventually give up nuclear weapons.

Two weeks ago, it expelled 11 South Korean officials from a joint industrial park inside the North.

"You can expect President Lee to exercise the utmost patience with North Korea," a senior presidential Blue House official told reporters, speaking before news of the latest expulsion and adding there had been no signs of any military activity.

"We want to engage in open and substantial dialogue."

(Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz)