Unification Minister Jeong Se-Hyun said North Korea had hinted at showing "flexibility" in the nuclear impasse when its leader Kim Jong-Il visited China last month.

"I will point it out to the North Koreans that there should be some progress this time," he said, shortly before leaving for North Korea to attend inter-Korean rapprochement talks.

The meeting comes ahead of preliminary negotiations in Beijing next week aimed at clearing the way for a new round of six-nation discussions to end the impasse over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

A row over the North's nuclear program has been deadlocked since October 2002 when Washington accused North Korea of breaking a 1994 nuclear freeze by launching a secret weapons drive.

Two rounds of six-party talks -- involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States -- have so far failed to narrow differences between the United States and North Korea.

Washington demands a verifiable and irreversible dismantling of the North's nuclear weapons programs. Pyongyang insists it will freeze nuclear facilities only if Washington provides economic aid and makes a security pledge.

The cabinet-level inter-Korean rapprochment talks have been the main channel of dialogue between the two Koreas since a landmark summit in 2000 took both countries into a new era of diplomacy.

Jeong said the main agenda of this week's discussions in Pyongyang is to review the progress of inter-Korean projects and cross-border transport links.

He said South Korea was ready to talk about rice shipments to the famine-hit country only if requested by North Korea.

On Tuesday, a South Korean cargo plane left for North Korea's Sunan airport carrying 70 tonnes of medicine for victims of a train disaster which left at least 150 people dead and 1,300 injured at Ryongchon, near the Chinese border.

The aid followed Seoul's first humanitarian airlift Friday for victims of April 22 disaster, when a plane carrying 470,000 dollars worth of relief goods headed across the border.

South Korea originally offered one million dollars in aid but has now assented to North Korea's 27 million dollar request for relief goods, including bulldozers, school equipment and color televisions.

Backing down from an earlier refusal of overland aid, Pyongyang has promised to open its border to allow aid materials to be driven in. Seoul plans to send some 20 trucks of goods to North Korea.

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