North Korea angrily rejected US President George W. Bush's call for dialogue, dismissing him as a "politically backward child" bent on using arms and money to change the North's communist political system.
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Reacting to Mr Bush's visit to South Korea this week, a North Korean Foreign Ministry statement said the US had insulted President Kim Jong-il by criticizing its political system and economic failings.
Mr Bush renewed an unconditional US offer for talks with North Korea, but also criticized the lack of food and freedom in the North and said his earlier provocative "axis of evil" remarks were aimed at the North's government, not its people.
"Bush's outbursts against the DPRK system are an insult to the national feelings of the Korean people," said the statement, carried by the North's official Korea Central News Agency (KCNA).
DPRK is the acronym of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"The DPRK can never pardon anyone who dares pull up its supreme headquarters and slander its political system though he is a man bereft of an elementary reason or a politically backward child," it said.
"We are not willing to have contact with his clan," it said. "Useless is such dialogue advocated by the US to find a pretext for invasion."
Mr Bush said the United States had "no intention of invading North Korea" but said the 37, US troops based in South Korea would defend the South if needed against threats posed by the North's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.