South Korea's presidential office Cheong Wa Dae on Tuesday refuted a new report that it would revise its North Korea policy to consider a regime change in the communist neighbor.
"Our government has not considered North Korea's regime change or made it a policy," Cheong Wa Dae spokeswoman Kim Hee-jung told reporters.
President Lee Myung-bak has not mentioned the issue, she added.
The Munhwa Ilbo, a Seoul-based evening newspaper, carried a front-page article saying that South Korea has "put a variety of options, including a regime change, on the table."
It quoted an unnamed senior Cheong Wa Dae official as warning that North Korea will "come to an end if it insists on its current path and does not abandon its nuclear program and militaristic brinkmanship."
President Lee on Monday made clear that South Korea would no longer tolerate the North's provocations, denouncing the regime's deadly artillery attack on a South Korean island last week as a "crime against humanity."
Lee said Seoul has given up hopes that the North will dismantle its nuclear weapons and roll back its brinkmanship through dialogue.