South Korean leader urges North to seek peace

"Nothing can be achieved through provocations," he said in a Liberation Day speech marking the 1945 end of Japan's colonial rule over what was until then a unified Korea.

"We have lived in the era of confrontation for the past six decades. Now is the time to overcome it and open the age of peace and cooperation," he said, urging the North to join in the pursuit of their "common prosperity".

Lee said that despite lingering cross-border tensions, the South would continue offering humanitarian aid to its impoverished neighbour where flooding due to heavy rainfall this summer has exacerbated food shortages.

"Aid for natural disasters will continue," he said.

The Koreas faced renewed tension last week after the South accused the North of firing shells along the flashpoint Yellow Sea border that was the scene of a deadly artillery attack in November.

The South said its marines fired warning shots last Wednesday in response to two shells fired by the North, which denied the charge, saying the sounds came from "normal blasting" from construction work.

The North accused Seoul of fabricating the latest incident as a pretext to justify annual US-South Korea joint military exercises due to begin on Tuesday.

US and South Korean officials described the exercises as defensive and routine, but the North denounced it as preparation for "a war of aggression".

Tension on the peninsula has been acute since the South accused the North of torpedoing a South Korean warship in March last year, with the loss of 46 lives -- a charge Pyongyang denies.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011