No progress made on inter-Korean relations: S Korean president

SEOUL, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) -- South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said on Thursday there has been no improvement in relations between South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) for the past year though he remained hopeful.

"We are successfully laying the foundation for better ties," Lee said in a meeting with ministries of foreign, unification and defense officials, according to Yonhap News Agency.

"We should reconsider our conventional thinking on diplomacy, unification as well as national defense," the president said, adding the country needs to "refashion" itself on those issues.

The relations between South Korea and the DPRK got sour after Lee took office in February 2008 with a hard-line policy toward the DPRK, reversing a decade of engagement policy practiced by his two predecessors.

But more recently the two countries have inched toward a thaw, as the DPRK has accepted Seoul's humanitarian assistance amid talks of resuming stalled six-way negotiations on the denuclearization of the DPRK.