Koreas quickly end first talks since Lee in office

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - The first talks between North and South Korea since Pyongyang cut off dialogue this year in anger at the South's new conservative leader ended shortly after they began on Thursday without making progress.

The talks, proposed by the impoverished North and seen by analysts as a possible olive branch heralding future discussions, came as a U.S. nuclear envoy visited North Korea trying to rescue a faltering international disarmament-for-aid deal.

Colonels from the two Koreas met for about 90 minutes at the Panmunjom peace village, straddling the heavily armed border that has divided them for more than half a century.

Pool reports said the South had complained about insults to its president in the North's official media while North Korea demanded an apology over leaflets spread in the North by South Korean human rights activists.

Just as the talks ended, the North's official media separately issued a report calling President Lee Myung-bak "a despicable human scum whom no one can trust or deal with".

In a surprise move last week, the North proposed the meeting, the first direct contact for the two sides since Lee took office in February. Lee vowed to end what had been a free flow of aid to the North and instead tie handouts to progress Pyongyang makes in scrapping its nuclear arms programme.

Fifty-five years after the truce which halted the Korean War, North and South remain locked in tense confrontation.

Previous rounds of military talks focused on cutting tension over the disputed sea border and along the Demilitarised Zone that acts as a buffer between the states. The last round was in January.

Tensions were aggravated in July when a North Korean soldier shot dead a South Korean housewife when she was sightseeing at a mountain resort just north of the border.