SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea bitterly refused yesterday any dealings with Secretary of State Rice, as the top American diplomat began a six-day visit to Asia seeking a breakthrough in the two-year standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons program.

The nuclear crisis deepened last month when North Korea announced it had nuclear weapons and said it would boycott international disarmament talks because of American hostility toward its government.

Ms. Rice is to visit South Korea on Saturday after a stop in Japan, and will meet with the president, Roh Moohyun, and other top officials before heading to China for more consultations on the crisis.

North Korea was angered in January when Ms. Rice labeled it one of the world’s “outposts of tyranny.” She has refused to withdraw the remark, and said it reflects the truth about the communist country.

“It is quite illogical for the U.S. to intend to negotiate with [North Korea] without retracting its remarks listing its dialogue partner as ‘an outpost of tyranny,'” an unidentified North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said yesterday.

Ms. Rice “can make nothing but such outcries as she is no more than an official of the most tyrannical dictatorial state in the world,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency quoted the spokesman as saying. “Such [a] woman bereft of any political logic is not the one to be dealt with by us. Her reckless remarks showed to the world what type of a woman she is.”

The North also repeated that it would “bolster its nuclear arsenal for self-defense.” American officials have repeatedly said they don’t intend to attack North Korea.

Ms. Rice told reporters Tuesday while en route to India, the first stop of her Asia tour, that America continues to believe the nuclear standoff should be solved through six-nation disarmament talks and will refuse the North’s repeated demands for direct talks with Washington.