President Lee Myung-bak on Wednesday said North Korea's nuclear program remains the biggest hurdle to inter-Korean cooperation. He was speaking at a roundtable of the Economist Intelligence Unit, the U.K. magazine's think tank, at the Seoul Grand Hyatt Hotel on Wednesday.

"If the North Korean nuclear issue remains unresolved, there is naturally a limit to inter-Korean cooperation," Lee said. "The North Korean nuclear issue, the biggest hurdle to expanding inter-Korean economic cooperation, must be resolved."

Lee said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il "thinks that if the negotiations drag on, U.S. President Barack Obama's term will end and a new president will arrive, the presidents will change in South Korea and China, and that a new set of negotiations will begin. But we can't keep doing this endlessly." 

Past talks on the North's nuclear issue prove that "North Korea always returns to square one, and participating nations in the six-party talks have given whatever they could give. What has been given cannot be retrieved. Although 20 years have passed, North Korea won't change," he said.

Lee Dong-kwan, senior presidential secretary for public relations, provided the customary footnotes to presidential remarks. "All the administrations in South Korea, the U.S., and Japan have been replaced recently, but close cooperation (on the nuclear issue) has been maintained. The North should realize this," he said.

Commenting on South Korea's economic outlook, the president said, "We expect the economy to keep growing in the fourth quarter and return to its normal growth path next year."

The EIU releases an annual outlook on macroeconomic indicators for individual countries.