SEOUL — North Korea and Russia have apparently scrapped a plan to hold talks between their leaders this week in Russia's Far Eastern region of Vladivostok, media reports said Wednesday.
The two sides had previously arranged a summit between Kim Jong-Il and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Vladivostok on June 30 or July 1, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.
"It's my understanding that they have scrapped a plan to hold the summit," a senior South Korean government source told Yonhap.
The news agency quoted an intelligence source in Moscow as saying the two sides might have ditched the plan because they failed to narrow differences over the agenda.
Japan's Kyodo news agency quoted sources as saying that among the reasons given by Pyongyang was that Kim's health was not in the best state.
Japanese and Russian media had reported earlier that Kim would likely visit Vladivostok on board his special train for talks with Medvedev.
M edvedev is scheduled to travel to the city to chair a conference on preparations for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in 2012.
Kim last visited Russia in 2002, when he met then-president Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok.
A Kremlin official speaking on condition of anonymity insisted on Wednesday there had never been any plan for Medvedev to meet Kim.
But in an possible sign of a sudden change of plan, reporters travelling with Medvedev to the Pacific city will be returning to Moscow late Thursday as opposed to later this week as initially planned, the official told AFP.
He declined to provide further details.
North Korea threatened on Wednesday to launch "a retaliatory sacred war" against South Korea for alleged slander as the two sides held rare talks on a stalled joint tourism project.
A Pyongyang government spokesman accused the South's frontline army units of displaying slogans slandering the North's "army, system and dignity" and said they are "little short of a clear declaration of war".
The unidentified spokesman, in a statement carried by the official news agency, vowed to respond to any provocations with a "merciless retaliatory sacred war".
The South's Hankyoreh newspaper Monday quoted some of the slogans as reading "Let's stick swords and guns into the hearts of North Korean enemy army!" and "A club is the only medicine for a mad dog!"
The North made similar threats when South Korean reservists were found to be using pictures of Pyongyang's ruling Kim dynasty as rifle-range targets.
That practice has since been stopped.
Tensions have been high for well over a year, since the South accused the North of torpedoing a warship in March 2010 and killing 46 sailors.
Pyongyang denied the charge, but went on to shell a border island last November, killing four South Koreans including two civilians.
The latest warning came as 12 South Korean government offici als and businesspeople travelled to a jointly-run mountain resort in the North to discuss the ownership of South Korean assets there.
Mount Kumgang opened in 1998 as a symbol of reconciliation and helped the impoverished communist state to earn tens of millions of dollars a year.
But the South suspended visits after a North Korean soldier shot dead a Seoul tourist who had strayed into a restricted military zone in 2008.
Last year the North seized or sealed off several South Korean properties in protest at the failure to restart the tours.
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