Pyongyang - North Korea said it was ready in principle to resume reconciliation talks that it broke off this year with South Korea but made such a development dependent on the South's behaviour, a German lawmaker visiting Pyongyang said Friday.

Hartmut Koschyk, chairman of the German-Korean parliamentary group, met with North Korea's second most powerful leader Friday and said Kim Yong Nam accused South Korean President Lee Myung Bak of brushing off the reconciliation efforts of the past 10 years.

South Korea must, therefore, "send a strong signal," Kim told Koschyk, the German said.

Seoul - South Korea said Thursday it had confirmed North Korea has started to reassemble its Yongbyon reactor, and expressed concern about the development, urging North Korea to stop turning back the "progress of denuclearization."

"We've confirmed North Korea has actually started the work to reassemble its reactor. And we urge North Korea to stop the work and not to further worsen the situation," South Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement released overnight.

Seoul - North Korea may accept food aid from South Korea if the aid comes from a non-governmental organization, the South Korean Ministry of Unification said Wednesday.

North Korea has declined any food aid from South Korea since inter-Korean relations were further strained when a South Korean tourist was shot to death by a North Korean soldier in July.

"North Korea expressed its intent to receive food but under the condition the donor is a certain South Korean NGO," ministry spokesman Kim Ho-Nyun said in a press briefing.

Beijing - The United Nations food agency Tuesday made an urgent appeal for 60 million dollars in emergency aid to North Korea, saying the food crisis in some areas of the impoverished nation was t

Tokyo - Tokyo would lift sanctions against North Korea, provided it resumes investigations into the abduction of Japanese citizens and despite Pyongyang reneging on a pledge to disable its nuclear facilities, Foreign Minister Masahiko Koumura said Friday.

Japan planned to proceed with a promised deal to lift some of its sanctions against the communist state if North Korea executes the agreement to investigate the abduction of Japanese citizens by its agents in the 1970s and '80s, Japan's top diplomat said, three days after North Korea said it would stop work on disabling its nuclear facilities.