South Korean president to meet visiting NKoreans

By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer

SEOUL, South Korea – South Korean President Lee Myung-bak will meet a delegation of visiting North Korean officials on Sunday, a government official said, as a report said they were bearing a message from the communist country's leader.

Relations between Pyongyang and Seoul have been tense since Lee took office in February 2008 and he has not previously held talks with any officials from the North.

They will meet Sunday morning at the presidential Blue House, said Chun Hae-sung, a spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles relations with the North.

No other details were immediately available, and officials at Lee's office could not be reached.

The six North Korean officials — including the country's spy chief — arrived in Seoul on Friday to mourn former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. Kim, a champion of inter-Korean cooperation and dialogue who served as president from 1998 to 2003, died Tuesday at age 85.

The visit comes amid recent signs of a thaw in relations between the two sides, which have remained divided since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

Kim Yang Gon, the spy chief who also handles relations with South Korea, met for 80 minutes earlier Saturday with South Korean Unification Minister Hyun In-taek. The meeting was the first such top-level encounter in almost two years.

South Korea later said the North Korean officials requested a meeting with Lee. South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported they were carrying a letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. It did not identify the source of the information.

Tensions between the Koreas have spiked in recent months after North Korea's test of a second nuclear device in May and its firing of a series of ballistic missiles in July. It also withdrew from six-nation nuclear disarmament negotiations in April.

But earlier this month the North released two detained U.S. reporters after a visit to Pyongyang by former President Bill Clinton. The country also let a South Korean worker it had detained for months return home, although it continues to hold four South Korean fishermen whose boat strayed into northern waters in July.

North Korea also said recently it would lift restrictions on cross-border traffic with South Korea, resume cargo train service across the border and restart tourism ventures with Seoul.