Obama said he had been told by former president Bill Clinton who visited the country in August that Kim, 67, who suffered a stroke last year, was "pretty healthy and in control."

"That's important to know, because we don't have a lot of interaction with the North Koreans," Obama told CNN, adding that in his talks with Kim, Clinton had "had a chance to see him close up and have conversations."

"I won't go into any more details than that, but there's no doubt that this is somebody who I think for a while people thought was slipping away. He's reasserted himself."

Fears over Kim's health after he had a stroke around August 2008 triggered concern among the diplomatic community that the hardline communist nation could be destabilized, triggering speculation about an eventual succession.

For months afterwards Pyongyang made a series of bellicose moves, including missile launches and a nuclear test. But in an unexpected turn of events, North Korea has made recent peace overtures to both Washington and Seoul.

Obama said he believed the Pyongyang regime may be changing its tactics.

"I think that North Korea is saying to itself, 'We can't just bang our spoon on the table and somehow think that the world's going to react positively. We've got to start behaving responsibly.'

"So hopefully we'll start seeing some progress on that front," Obama said.

He also praised the six-nation pact spearheading efforts to persuade North Korea to come clean about its nuclear ambitions for standing together.

"This is a success story so far... that we have been able to hold together a coalition that includes the Chinese and the Russians to really apply some of the toughest sanctions we've seen, and it's having an impact," Obama said.

Washington has said it is prepared to talk directly with Pyongyang in order to bring it back to the six-nation talks, which are hosted by China.

Kim told a Chinese envoy that he was willing to engage in bilateral and multilateral talks on his country's controversial nuclear program, Chinese state media said Friday.

The reclusive North Korean leader offered the olive branch during a visit to Pyongyang by State Councillor Dai Bingguo of China, North Korea's closest ally and the host of the on-off nuclear negotiations.

Kim told Dai that Pyongyang "insists on denuclearization" of the Korean peninsula and was "willing to resolve relevant problems via bilateral and multilateral talks," China's state Xinhua news agency reported.

Clinton paid a rare visit to North Korea in August and met twice with Kim to win the release of two US journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been convicted of illegally entering the hardline communist state.

The former US president held talks with Kim during an hour-long meeting and then during a dinner lasting more than two hours. Clinton later briefed Obama about the trip, but few details of their talks have been released.

North Korea quit the six-party nuclear disarmament talks -- which group the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States -- in April after the United Nations censured its long-range rocket test.

The United Nations then imposed tougher sanctions after Pyongyang's nuclear test in May.

earlier related report
Seoul fears being sidelined in nuclear deal
Seoul (UPI) Sep 18 - South Korea's top security ministers expressed strong concerns that Seoul may be sidelined in the process of disarming North Korea of nuclear weapons, as the United States and North Korea are set to open direct negotiations.

In unusually bold comments against the North, South Korea Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said on Friday that the prime target of Pyongyang's nuclear bombs was South Korea, stressing that the country's communist neighbor was attempting to dominate the South by force.

"North Korea's development of nuclear weapons is targeted at the South, where freedom and democracy are upheld," he told a forum of business leaders in Seoul.

"It is dangerous and naive to believe that North Korea's nuclear weapons involve only the United States and to doubt that the North would ever use the weapons on the South," Yu said. "It is North Korea's goal to unify the country through communization and the nuclear weapons were developed for that purpose."

North Korea has called for direct talks with the United States to discuss the nuclear crisis, claiming the standoff was caused by Washington's "hostile" policy against Pyongyang. It has refused to rejoin the six-nation talks, which include South Korea, China, Japan and Russia in addition to North Korea and the United States, declaring that the multilateral process "dead."

"The nuclear standoff is not a bilateral issue between the United States and North Korea, but our problem and a regional and global problem of nonproliferation," Yu said. "The reason North Korea is repeatedly insisting on direct talks is because it wants to be recognized as a nuclear state in order to proceed with arms reduction talks with the United States."

Yu also said the South and the North cannot coexist unless Pyongyang abandons its nuclear programs, strongly indicating that Seoul would not resume economic aid without tangible progress in the denuclearization process.

Seoul's pointman on North Korea, Unification Minister Hyun In-taek, also said any direct dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington must be firmly based on removing nuclear weapons in the North.

"Over the past decade, we've seen negotiations with North Korea resuming and stalling" with the standoff deteriorating, Hyun told a security forum in Seoul. "We should not forget this lesson from the past."

In an even stronger note, Seoul's new defense chief Kim Tae-young told Parliament that he would order an attack on the North should it deploy tactical nuclear weapons, saying his government has confirmed where the North stores its nuclear weapons.

The series of strong remarks comes as the United States is apparently prepared to accept the North's long-held desire for direct talks, stepping back from its earlier position that it would not have one-on-one talks before the North joins the six-nation talks.

The U.S. State Department said the United States will "make some judgments in the very near future" on the North's bilateral talks offer after consultations with other countries, referring to South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

Diplomatic sources in Seoul said exact schedules would come after next week's meetings of the U.N. General Assembly and Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations in the United States.

Seoul officials voiced concerns that the North could seek to benefit by dividing its dialogue partners in order to force each to come to separate terms and South Korea could be sidelined if U.S.-North Korea talks dramatically move forward.

"We will not let North Korea stall negotiations and divide the five dialogue partners, which will not reward its bad behavior again," Yu said Friday.

His ministry also played down a media report that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed willingness to engage in "bilateral and multilateral talks," an indication that the country would return to the long-stalled six-nation talks.

Kim made the comments to Chinese President Hu Jintao's special envoy Dai Bingguo, a state councilor, China's Xinhua news agency reported.

Meeting with the Chinese envoy, Kim said North Korea would "continue adhering toward the goal of denuclearization" and "is willing to resolve the relevant problems through bilateral and multilateral talks," Xinhua said in a dispatch from Pyongyang.

The North's official media did not report what Kim told Dai, just saying they had talks "in an amicable atmosphere" on relations between the two countries and "a series of issues of mutual concern."

A South Korean Foreign Ministry official said it welcomed Kim's remark but raised doubts that the North would rejoin the six-nation talks in the near future. "North Korea is likely to attach fresh conditions for returning to the six-party talks or call for a new dialogue format," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

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