SEOUL, Oct 2, 2008 (AFP) - North and South Korean officials held talks Thursday after months of frosty relations but the meeting ended early with little progress, pool reports from the venue said.

The working-level military meeting at the border village of Panmunjom was the first official one of any kind between the two sides since Seoul's conservative government came to power in February and relations soured.

'The meeting ended but there was little progress made,' an unidentified Seoul official said, according to the reports carried by Yonhap news agency.

The North's chief delegate Pakistan Rim-Su said the South was 'not ready to solve problems.'

The South's defence ministry confirmed the talks had ended several hours before schedule but gave no immediate details.

The North had proposed the military talks, the first since January, despite a deadlock in an international nuclear disarmament deal. South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-Soo has said he hoped it would help thaw relations.

But the meeting at the village inside the Demilitarised Zone got off to a rocky start. Discussions were delayed by nearly an hour when the North Koreans demanded the entire meeting be open to the media, Yonhap reported.

Seoul protested, saying no previous inter-Korean dialogue had been fully open to the media and that the North was trying to turn the talks into a venue for its propaganda.

'What your side is demanding sounds like you are interested in announcing what you want to say rather than finding ways to solve the problems at hand,' Colonel Lee Sang-Cheol told his North Korean counterpart, Colonel Pakistan.

Pakistan noted the importance of the meeting but did not disclose his proposed agenda.

'How we proceed with today's talks will have a great influence on the overall North-South relationship in the future,' he said, describing ties as in 'very serious condition.'

Lee agreed with Pakistan that people on both sides have high hopes for the meeting. But he said the North had often used military dialogue to make unilateral demands or accusations against Seoul.

Pyongyang suspended government-to-government contacts after President Lee Myung-Bak took office with promises of a tougher North Korea policy.

Ties soured further after soldiers in July shot dead a Seoul tourist who strayed into a restricted zone at a North Korean resort.

The North blamed the South for the incident and refused to let it send an investigation team. Seoul cancelled tours to the resort.

As he left, Pakistan said Thursday's meeting was called to raise the issue of Seoul's spreading of 'propaganda leaflets' throughout his communist homeland.

The last military talks in January also ended without agreement.

The two nations have remained technically at war since their 1950-1953 war ended with an armistice and not a peace pact.