(LEAD) Seoul`s appointment of hawkish minister `outright challenge`; Pyongyang

(ATTN: ADDS English-language Minju Joson report in paras 4, paras 7-8; EDITS lead para; TRIMS)
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 an "outright challenge."
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 nomination as minister of unification is an open provocation as it is
little short of a declaration that South Korea would continue to stand in
confrontation with (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."
"Lee doesn't want improvement of the North-South relations, nor peace and
national unification," the newspaper said.
"He only seeks to further escalate the confrontation???. and push the
inter-Korean relations deeper into the abyss of confrontation and ruin," it said.

While 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.
(END)