Seoul`s appointment of hawkish minister `outright challenge`; Pyongyang

SEOUL, Jan. 25 (Yonhap) -- North Korea criticized South Korea on Sunday for
appointing a hawkish scholar as the new unification minister in charge of
relations with Pyongyang, calling the appointment a "provocation."
Last week, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak named Hyun In-taek, a political
science professor at Korea University, as Seoul's new pointman on North Korea in
a partial Cabinet reshuffle.
The move reinforced views that the Lee administration won't change its hard-line
stance on North Korea, despite stepped-up saber-rattling by the communist
country.
Hyun's appointment is a "naked provocation that declared a confrontation" against
Pyongyang, the North Korean government newspaper Minju Joson said in a
commentary.
The statement was the North's first reaction to the South's new unification
minister.
Hyun, 55, is known as the architect of President Lee's North Korea policy linking
Seoul's economic aid to the North's denuclearization. Pyongyang has rejected it
as "anti-national, anti-unification."
"At a situation where Hyun was named as the unification minister, no one is for
sure what kind of catastrophic incident would happen in North-South relations,"
the newspaper said.
Whlie North Korea took a series of actions against the South, including
cross-border travel restrictions, in recent months, President Lee has claimed a
"wait and see" approach is the most viable policy option.
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