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In his New Year speech, Lee said his conservative government will not move first to improve strained ties and urged North Korea to drop its attempt to divide South Koreans and drive a wedge in the Seoul-Washington alliance.
"North Korea must now give up its outdated practice of trying to create tension among South Koreans," he said in the speech televised live across the country.
It is now time for the isolated communist country to "accurately" understand the changes in the environment surrounding the peninsula and cooperate with the South "in opening a new era of coexistence and co-prosperity," Lee said.
If the North abandons the confrontational policy, South Korea would revive reconciliation efforts and help the impoverished country ease economic troubles, Lee said. "I am fully prepared and ready to talk with North Korea at any time and to cooperate as a partner," he said.
The statement was in line with his remark made earlier this week when he laid out his government's main policy directives for the New Year. At that time, Lee said he would resolve North Korean issues “from a long-term perspective and not use inter-Korean relations for political purposes," apparently referring to his liberal predecessors who pursued reconciliation with the North partly in order to strengthen their political support at home.
His liberal predecessors pushed for nearly unconditional reconciliation with the communist neighbor for the past decade, providing massive economic aid despite its nuclear weapons ambitions.
The bids led to a series of unprecedented political events, such as two rounds of inter-Korean summit, and the economic cooperation project, which triggered reconciliation and unification fevers in the South that boosted supports for the liberal leadership.
When the conservative Lee took office in February last year, opposing unconditional aid and vowing to be tough on the nuclear-armed country, North Korea cut off all official ties and suspended joint projects across the border, blasting Lee as a "traitor" and a "U.S. sycophant."
In its own New Year's message, the North described the South Korean leader as a "fascist" who leads the "sycophantic and treacherous" regime, and called on the South Korean people to oust him.
Lee's regime is seeking to "restore the era of fascist dictatorship and are hell-bent on inter-Korean confrontation," said the New Year's message issued in the form of a joint editorial in the newspapers of the North's ruling party, army and youth league.
The message called for South Koreans to "make more dynamic efforts to put an end to the fascist rule of the sycophantic and treacherous conservative authorities and remove the danger of war.”
However, the message dropped its customary accusation of the United States in the run-up to the inauguration of the Obama administration that has vowed to pursue dialogue-based engagement with the nuclear-armed North.
"Different from joint editorials of previous years, it did not throw any criticism against the United States while mentioning the realization of a denuclearized Korean peninsula," Seoul's Unification Ministry that handles inter-Korean ties said in a statement.
Officials and analysts in South Korea say the lack of criticism indicates Pyongyang's hope to start afresh after eight years of sour relations with the outgoing Bush administration. They said the move is also aimed at weakening policy coordination between Seoul and Washington over how to deal with the North.
"The joint editorial shows the North would keep its hostile stance against the South in the New Year, while reaching out to the United States," said Kim Kun-shik, a professor at Kyungnam University in Seoul.
Kim and other analysts say the North is expected to seek serious direct talks on the nuclear issue and normalization of bilateral diplomatic ties with the Obama administration, expressing concerns that South Korea may be sidelined.
In the face of the concerns, Lee's government is expected to form unofficial channels with the North to break the deadlock in cross-border relations,
In its New Year policy plan, the Unification Ministry said it would try to resume frozen talks with the North and maintain close policy coordination with the United States over North Korea.
"The government will sincerely urge North Korea to respond to our suggestions for inter-Korean dialogue," the ministry said. "We will continue our efforts to resume inter-Korean talks," it said.
