Seoul - The first military talks between North and South Korea in eight months ended shortly after they began Thursday with no significant progress and North Korea accusing the South of spreading propoganda in its territory, South Korean media reports said.

Pak Rim Su, the leader of the North's delegation, accused the South Korean side of not being prepared to solve problems at the talks in Panmunjom, a village inside the demilitarized zone dividing the two Koreas, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported.

North Korea called the talks to protest propoganda leaflets that South Korea has been disseminating in his country, Pak said.

A day earlier, the South Korean military had said the officer talks were being held to discuss the implementation of agreements already made between the neighbours' militaries.

Little progress was made in the talks, which lasted less than two hours, a member of the South Korean delegation told Yonhap.

North Korea proposed to hold the discussions in a surprise move last week.

It was the first offer by North Korea to hold such a dialogue since conservative South Korean President Lee Myung Bak took office in February.

Relations between the divided Koreas - which are still at war after an armistice and not a peace treaty ended the 1950-53 Korean War - have worsened since then as Lee took a more hardline stance against the North than his liberal predecessors. For instance, he linked an expansion of economic cooperation with the North with progress by Pyongyang in talks to end its nuclear weapons programme.

The military discussions were held as North Korea prepared to revive work at its main nuclear site at Yongbyon, which it had promised to disable as part of its talks with South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

The top US negotiator in those talks, Christopher Hill, drove to Pyongyang from Seoul Wednesday after North Korea last week removed seals on its nuclear facilities that were placed there by the UN's international nuclear watchdog and said it would resume work at its plutonium-reprocessing plant.

The previous military talks were held in January. (dpa)