North Korean envoys called yesterday for an improvement in inter-Korean ties as the South confirmed the group would meet its leader in the highest-level talks between the neighbours in years.
The delegation sent from Pyongyang to mourn former South Korean leader Kim Dae-Jung, will visit President Lee Myung-Bak in Seoul today, a unification ministry spokeswoman told AFP.
The group said they were carrying a message from North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il that they wanted to convey to Lee, Yonhap news agency reported.
"The North Korean delegation will pay a visit to President Lee on Sunday morning," spokeswoman Lee Jong-Joo said late yesterday.
Relations between the two Koreas, who never signed a peace deal following the 1950-53 Korean War, worsened sharply after Lee came to power last year and pledged to take a firmer line with Kim and his isolated communist regime.
"While meeting many South Koreans here, I came to believe that inter-Korean ties must be improved at the earliest possible date," said Kim Yang-Gon, the North's official in charge of inter-Korean ties, according to pooled reports.
"We've had little opportunity to talk... I hope that these first high-level official talks under the Lee Myung-Bak administration will provide a chance to have frank talks," he told South Korea's Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek.
The six-member delegation was originally in Seoul only to mourn the death of former president Kim Dae-Jung, who won the Nobel Peace Prize after he held the first inter-Korean summit in 2000.
It was originally scheduled to leave at 8 a.m. yesterday, one day before Kim's state funeral. However, amid recently improving ties with Seoul and its ally the United States, South Korean officials and the delegation held 90 minutes of talks yesterday.
Hyun was holding a private dinner meeting with the North Koreans yesterday evening at their Grand Hilton hotel. His ministry said they would discuss "practical issues".
The rare encounters yesterday and planned meeting with Lee have raised hopes for better ties after more than a year of tension, worsened by the North's nuclear and missile tests in early summer.