Image copyright AP Image caption The North Korean leader's new year speech was also screened in the South 
 
 North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has offered to hold talks at the highest level with South Korea. 
 
 President Kim was giving his new year message broadcast on state television. 
 
 He said if Pyongyang's conditions were met, he would even be prepared to hold a summit meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye. 
 
 South Korea said the move was "meaningful", and talks should include "practical and frank discussions on all issues of mutual concern". 
 
 "Our government hopes for dialogue between the South and North Korean authorities in the near future without limits on format," said Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae, quoted by the South's Yonhap news agency. 
 
 On Monday, Mr Ryoo had called for dialogue to resume on issues including reunions for families separated by the Korean War, adding that he hoped North Korea would respond positively. 
 
 He offered to meet in Seoul, Pyongyang or any other South or North Korean city agreed with North Korean officials. 
 
 'Tense mood' 
 
 In his address, Mr Kim said the "tragic" division of Korea could no longer be tolerable and acceptable. 
 
 "Depending on the mood and circumstances, there is no reason not to hold a high-level summit," he said. 
 
 But later in his speech, Mr Kim condemned joint US-South Korean defence drills for deepening tensions on the peninsula. 
 
 "In a tense mood of such war-preparatory exercises, trust-based dialogue can't be possible, and North-South relations can't move forward," he said. 
 
 The BBC's Kevin Kim in Seoul says it is unclear how likely a meeting between the two Korean presidents would be, given the tensions. 
 
 The North has previously seen the South's unification plans as an attempt to take it over. 
 
 The last formal high-level talks were in February 2014, leading to rare reunions for Korean families separated for over 60 years since the end of 1950-53 Korean War. 
 
 More talks planned in October were dropped after North Korea accused the South of not doing enough to stop activists sending anti-Northern leaflets across the border on balloons. 
 
 The two Koreas have technically been at war since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty. ||||| North Korea has abruptly cancelled high-level talks with Seoul and threatened to pull out of a planned summit with Donald Trump if the US continues to insist on the regime giving up all of its nuclear weapons. 
 
 
 
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 A North Korean official said the country had no interest in a summit with US if it was based on “one-sided” demands to give up nuclear weapons, according to state media. 
 
 Citing first vice minister of foreign affairs Kim Kye-gwan, North Korea’s central news agency also said the fate of the US summit as well as bilateral relations “would be clear” if Washington speaks of a Libya-style denuclearisation for the North. 
 
 The statement added Trump would remain as a “failed president” if he followed in the steps of his predecessors. 
 
 “We will appropriately respond to the Trump administration if it approaches the North Korea-US summit meeting with a truthful intent to improve relations,” Kim said. 
 
 He added: “But we are no longer interested in a negotiation that will be all about driving us into a corner and making a one-sided demand for us to give up our nukes and this would force us to reconsider whether we would accept the North Korea-US summit meeting.” 
 
 The statement came after North Korea cancelled a meeting with South Korean officials just two hours before it was due to start on Wednesday, in protest at joint US-South Korean military exercises, codenamed Max Thunder. 
 
 The drills, which began on Friday, involve about 100 warplanes from the US and South Korea, including eight F-22 stealth fighters and an unspecified number of B-52 bombers. 
 
 Yonhap news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying that a B-52 bomber, which has yet to join the drills, may not participate, in what could be interpreted as a concession to Pyongyang. 
 
 But South Korea’s defence ministry said exercises will continue, saying they were strictly defensive in nature and designed to help pilots improve their skills. 
 
 Max Thunder is one of several annual exercises involving the US and South Korean military that are routinely condemned by the North as preparation for an invasion. 
 
 
 
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 South Korea’s defence minister, Song Young-moo, was to hold an emergency meeting with Gen Vincent Brooks, the commander of US Forces Korea, to discuss the allies’ response to the North’s protest. 
 
 For North Korea, the presence of bombers in joint US-South Korea drills triggers painful memories of the 1950-53 Korean war. 
 
 According to US air force estimates, bombing raids by US B-29s caused more damage to North Korea’s urban centres during that conflict than that seen in Germany or Japan during the second world war, with the US dumping 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea compared with 503,000 tons during the entire Pacific war. 
 
 Baik Tae-hyun, a spokesman for South Korea’s unification ministry, described Pyongyang’s decision as “regrettable” and said it ran counter to the “spirit and purpose” of the Panmunjom declaration agreed by Kim and the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, last month. 
 
 Baik urged the North to swiftly return to the talks but would not speculate on whether the North’s move would affect next month’s planned meeting between Kim and Trump. 
 
 KCNA said the manoeuvres represented a “flagrant challenge” to the joint declaration by Kim and Moon at a summit at the “truce village” of Panmunjom on the dividing line between their countries in April. 
 
 
 
 The two leaders agreed to completely “cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain, including land, air and sea, that are the source of military tension and conflict”. 
 
 The state department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, said the US had not heard directly from North Korea about any second thoughts. 
 
 
 
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 “What we have to go on is what Kim Jong-un has said before, that he understands and appreciates the importance to the United States of having these joint exercises,” Nauert said. “We have had no formal or informal notification of anything.” 
 
 “We will continue to plan the meeting.” 
 
 Kim Hyun-wook, a professor at the Korea national diplomatic academy in Seoul, said: “North Korea knows that cancelling the (Trump-Kim) summit would not be good for its own interests, and not good for US interests either. But the North Korean regime cannot accept US demands for denuclearisation without first receiving guarantees about its security. Let’s see what Trump does about this.” 
 
 In its complaint about the exercises, the Pyongyang regime described them as offensive war games targeting North Korea. A Pentagon spokesman, Col Rob Manning, said they were defensive. 
 
 
 
 US and South Korean officials had previously said that North Korea would accept joint military exercises in the run-up to the Trump summit. 
 
 
 
 The Panmunjom summit was supposed to have been followed by a meeting of senior officials from the two Koreas on Wednesday to implement a declaration agreed by Moon and Kim. The agenda included issues such as a formal end to the Korean war, denuclearisation and reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 conflict. 
 
 “The North Koreans know how to make an explicit threat. By their standards, this is pretty circumspect,” said Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. “It could very well be a play for additional leverage or to see how the Trump team reacts.” 
 
 
 
 Dismantling of North Korea nuclear site 'well under way', satellite images show Read more 
 
 Mintaro Oba, a former state department expert on Korea, said in a tweet: 
 
 “The question is whether they’re willing to go so far as to go through with it, or whether they’re mainly trying to gain some leverage [and] test how much we want the summit.” 
 
 Meanwhile, satellite photos suggest that the North Korean leadership is so far following through on its promise to dismantle its nuclear test site at Punggye-ri. 
 
 Pictures published by 38 North, a website analysing Korean issues, several buildings around the mountain site have been razed in recent days.
– "Depending on the mood and circumstances to be created, we have no reason not to hold the highest-level talks [with South Korea]" was one of the most unexpected statements that came out of Kim Jong Un's New Year's speech from Pyongyang in which he said he'd be open to a summit with his southern counterparts. But that amenable mood to conversing has apparently changed, as the North Korean leader today dismissed a request from South Korea's parliament to resume negotiations on hot-button issues such as human rights and families still separated by the Korean War, Reuters reports. An official from the South's Ministry of Unification says that the North gave no reason for turning down the request. Part of the North's sudden (but not terribly surprising) about-face may be that it's still peeved at South Korea's major ally, the US, for sanctions after the Sony hack, Reuters notes. South Korea's not exactly thrilled with its neighbor lately, either—and that distaste has recently been stirred up by a Korean-American woman (whom the South is now trying to deport) who talked up the great taste of North Korean beer and the country's clean rivers, reports AP. A third, more remote possibility why the Supreme Leader can't find the time to meet: birthday eyebrow wax? (Adding fuel to the fire: South Korea says its northern foe has a 6,000-member cyberarmy.)