North Korea, in its latest peace offensive, pressed South Korea Wednesday to resume inter-Korean dialogue after suspending its planned joint military exercises with the United States.

But the Seoul government immediately dismissed it as "propaganda," asking Pyongyang to accept its earlier proposal for high-level talks to arrange a breakthrough in icy cross-border relations without any conditions attached.

According to South Korea's Unification Ministry, the North sent what it called an "appeal" to South Korea to cancel its planned joint military exercises with the U.S. and agree to re-open the long-suspended inter-Korean dialogue.

The North's appeal, in the form of a letter delivered through the neutral border village of Panmunjom, was addressed to the presidential office, the speaker of the National Assembly, the ruling Saenuri Party, the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy and the (South) Korean Red Cross, it said.

The appeal, adopted a day earlier by the North's communist regime, political party and concerned organizations after a joint meeting, states that Pyongyang "is ready to have a candid discussion on all the problems that arise in mending inter-Korean relations and boldly settle them," the North's Korean Central News Agency said in a report, monitored in Seoul.

"It is possible to resume the suspended high-level contact and hold inter-sector talks if the South Korean authorities are sincere in their stand on improving inter-Korean relations through dialogue," said the appeal, according to the KCNA report.

Noting that the meeting was called "to carry out the tasks for national reunification set forth by Marshal Kim Jong-un in his New Year address," the participants urged the two Koreas "to achieve great national unity ... 70 years since the national division."

The appeal, however, also included the North's long-standing demand for a halt to joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises and the leaflet campaign waged by anti-Pyongyang activists in South Korea.

"If (South Korea) refuses to stop the annual war rehearsal for the northward invasion and justifies it as defensive, tensions on the Korean Peninsula will never die down and the danger of nuclear war will not be driven out," the North said in the appeal.

North Korea, which has long denounced joint military drills between the allies as preparations for a northward invasion, suggested earlier this month that it will temporarily suspend nuclear tests if the U.S. halts the joint military exercises with South Korea this year. Washington has already turned down the North's demand, labeling it as an "implicit threat."

Pyongyang also called on South Korea to deter "anti-reunification figures from reckless behavior," apparently referring to the civic activists here who have sent balloons across the border carrying leaflets that criticize the North Korean regime.

The message is the latest in a series of peace offensives from the North. Though the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made a surprise proposal for an inter-Korean summit during his New Year message, Pyongyang remains silent on Seoul's offer to hold ministerial talks in January to discuss such bilateral issues as the reunion of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

During a surprise visit to South Korea by a high-powered North Korean delegation in September, the two Koreas had previously agreed to hold a high-level meeting in early November at the latest. But the North later backtracked on the deal in protest of the leaflet campaign. (Yonhap)