South Korea chided North Korea Friday for criticizing President Park Geun-hye’s mention of the Aug. 4 land mine provocation during her summit with the Chinese leader, and for Pyongyang’s repeated moves to discredit the recent bilateral agreement to defuse border tensions.

Seoul had refrained from trading barbs with Pyongyang to stably implement the Aug. 25 agreement including the resumption of reunions of families separated across the border since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

“Our government expresses regret over North Korea’s criticism of our president’s remarks during her visit to China, and its threat to the execution of the agreement that was reached during last month’s high-level talks,” Unification Ministry spokesperson Jeong Joon-hee said during a regular press briefing.

“North Korea should stop such acts and come forward to cooperate with us to develop the inter-Korean relations by conscientiously executing the agreement.”

A day earlier, Pyongyang’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said that her remarks about the mine blast were “extremely rude and humiliating.” It also repeated that the mine blast that injured two South Korean soldiers was “fabricated” by Seoul.

The response from the North came after Park and Chinese President Xi Jinping reaffirmed their opposition to North Korea’s provocative acts and development of nuclear arms during their sixth summit in Beijing on Wednesday.

Over the past week, the North has made a series of statements to deny its responsibility for the land mine provocation and downplay its expression of regret over the detonation in the Aug. 25 agreement.

Hours after the agreement, Hwang Pyong-so, director of the North’s military’s General Political Bureau, argued that South Korea’s claim about the mine blast was “groundless.” Seoul did not respond to it, regarding it as part of the North’s propaganda activities for the domestic audience.

On Wednesday, the unnamed spokesperson of the North’s National Defense Commission said that its expression of the regret in the bilateral agreement was not the North’s acceptance of responsibility, but an expression to console the wounded South Korean troops.

Despite the exchange of barbs, the inter-Korean relations are not going to further deteriorate, analysts said, noting that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un needs to improve cross-border relations to break his country’s isolation and find a way to improve its economy.

Meanwhile, Seoul is stepping up its diplomacy to strengthen coordination with the U.S. and China to address North Korea issues, a senior Seoul official told reporters on the customary condition of anonymity.

Seoul’s top nuclear envoy Hwang Joon-kook plans to visit the U.S. next week to meet with his U.S. counterpart Sung Kim. A senior Chinese official will also visit Seoul next week to discuss North Korea’s nuclear issues.

The agenda for their talks is expected to include deterring North Korea’s potential provocations around Oct. 10, the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party.

Based on its analysis of commercial satellite imagery, 38 North, a research website run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said that it was not yet possible to determine whether Pyongyang would conduct any launch soon.

The website noted that recent imagery showed construction at the vertical engine test stand that would allow the testing of larger, more capable rocket engines was proceeding rapidly. But it said that the work was unrelated to the question of whether the North will conduct a new launch in the near future.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)