North Korea blast Seoul’s reunification offer

North Korea has slammed a proposal by South Korean President Park Geun-hye for reunification through economic exchanges and humanitarian aid as the “daydream of a psychopath.”

The country’s National Defense Commission (NDC) denounced Park’s offer on Saturday in a statement, calling the reunification proposal as “nonsense” full of “hypocrisy and deception.”

The rejection was the first official reaction from Pyongyang since the South Korean president made the offer last month during a visit in the eastern German city of Dresden.

Park urged the North to increase the number of reunions of families separated by the division of Korea as well as increase cross-border economic and cultural exchanges.

A spokesman for the NDC said Germany’s reunification came about with the West absorbing the East and accused the South Korean president of begging foreign countries to help reunite the Koreas.

“This is merely a daydream of psychopath,” the statement said. “The fact that in that particular place (Dresden), Park Geun-hye lashed her tongue about reunification gave away her sinister mind.”

The North Korean statement urged Seoul instead to abide by previous bilateral agreements, stressing that all the earlier accords gave priority to addressing the issue of easing military confrontation.

The remarks come as tension between the two Koreas remain high since the South launched annual military exercises with the United States last month.

Pyongyang has condemned the drills as a practice for invasion, saying it will take additional measures to demonstrate its might as long as threats from the US persist.

Rail lines and other contacts between the two sides were first severed during the 1950-53 Korean War. No peace deal has been signed since then, meaning that Pyongyang and Seoul remain technically at war.