North Korea on Thursday turned down Seoul’s offer of working-level talks to discuss the release of a South Korean missionary who has been detained in the communist country for more than eight months, the Unification Ministry said.

Kim Jung-uk was sentenced to life with hard labor on May 31 for plotting to subvert the state, espionage, illegal border-crossing, attempting to set up an underground church and other charges. He was arrested last October after entering the country from the Chinese border city of Dandong, he said at a news conference in Pyongyang in late February.

Seoul on Tuesday proposed a meeting on the southern side of the border village of Panmunjeom on June 17.

Pyongyang said the verdict was “not something to argue about because Kim was caught, arrested and handled according to our law after illegally infiltrating our territory to commit antistate, hostile acts under the mask of a pastor,” according to the ministry.

“We gravely regret that North Korea rejects not only our demands for family and lawyer interviews, his release and repatriation but also our offer of talks to discuss this, even though it arrested and is holding our citizen arbitrarily,” it said in a statement.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)