North Korea challenges Seoul to Q+A over dialogue

By Jeremy Laurence

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's new leadership, highly critical of South Korea since taking power, published an unusual "open questionnaire" to its rival on Thursday, demanding answers to show that Seoul was sincere about resuming inter-Korean dialogue.

South Korea has reached out to its reclusive neighbour since the death of the state's leader Kim Jong-il last December in the hope of persuading Pyongyang to suspend its nuclear programme and return to regional aid-for-disarmament talks.

John Delury of Yonsei University said the North was trying to call South Korea's bluff on its willingness to engage, saying some of the demands would be dismissed as ludicrous in Seoul.

Analysts also said the North was also trying to influence voters in presidential and parliamentary elections in the South this year, by portraying the ruling conservatives as impeding improved relations on the divided peninsula.

The policy department of the North's National Defence Commission ran the questions on the state KCNA news agency, saying the South should make clear its aims on resuming dialogue.

"The Policy Department of the DPRK (North Korea's) NDC solemnly urges them to answer the following open questions as they loudly trumpet about a resumption of North-South dialogue and improvement of relations," the Council said in the dispatch.

The questions related to denuclearisation, joint U.S.-South Korea military drills, two deadly attacks on the South in 2010, psychological warfare and the need to conclude a peace treaty to replace an armistice which ended the 1950-53 Korean war.

Under its new "supreme commander" Kim Jong-un, the North has denounced President Lee Myung-bak's administration as a group of "confrontational maniacs" and "moral imbeciles."