North Korea launched into a tirade Thursday against South Korea's recent declassification of a transcript of an inter-Korean summit in 2007.
A North Korean agency handling inter-Korean affairs accused the South's conservative forces of attempting to use the secret documents for political purposes and further undermine summit deals on inter-Korean reconciliation between then-leaders Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Jong-il.
"The group's unilateral opening to public the summit minutes without approval of the north is a mockery of the dignity of its supreme leadership and a grave provocation to the dialogue partner," the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said in a English-version statement carried by the communist nation's official news agency, KCNA.
Earlier this week, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), South Korea's top state spy agency, released a verbatim transcript of the Roh-Kim meeting despite strong resistance from the main opposition party.
According to the transcript, Roh proposed a Yellow Sea peace zone to replace the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de-facto sea border between the two sides. The controversial line is a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a ceasefire, not a formal peace treaty.
The North has long sought to nullify the NLL, while South Koreans believe it should be kept until a lasting peace mechanism is established on the peninsula.
South Korea's conservatives insist the NLL is not a topic for any negotiations with the North. Some lawmakers demanded the transcript's release amid continued controversy over Roh's stance on the NLL.
Members of Roh's liberal party say the late president was focusing on a broader peace vision, rather than moving to give up the line.
The North Korean committee described the NLL as a "bogus line."
"As far as the issue of the 'northern limit line' in the West Sea touted by the conservative group is concerned, it is a bogus line because even its architect American master recognized it as an illegal one. It is, therefore, preposterous to vociferate about its 'defence' and 'preservation,'" it argued.
It accused the South Korean intelligence body of making public the minutes in order to distract public attention from its alleged intervention in the 2012 presidential elections.
"By origin, the summit minutes are handled as top secret in any country and they have been strictly kept secret as 'minutes of president' in South Korea, too," the committee said.