Seoul  - A delegation sent by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il arrived Friday in Seoul to pay respects to the late South Korean president Kim Dae Jung, who won the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to reconcile the two Koreas.

The visit was the first to South Korea by high-ranking North Korean functionaries since the inauguration of conservative South Korean President Lee Myung Bak in February last year.

The delegation, led by two top members of the ruling Korean Workers' Party, arrived at Kimpo International Airport in Seoul and was taken immediately to the National Assembly, where a memorial altar to Kim Dae Jung was erected, media reports said.

The delegation, which laid a wreath at the altar, also met with members of Kim Dae Jung's family.

The North Korean officials are scheduled to leave again on Saturday, one day ahead of Kim Dae Jung's funeral.

The former president, who was considered a democracy icon in South Korea and Asia and held the first North-South Korean summit with Kim Jong Il in 2000, died Tuesday of heart failure at the age of 83.

Inter-Korean relations have taken a turn for the worse since the inauguration of Lee, who has adopted a harder line against North Korea than his two liberal predecessors, including Kim Dae Jung.

Relations deteriorated further after North Korea's test-firing of a long-range nuclear missile and its second nuclear test earlier this year were met with international condemnation.

Recently, however, Pyongyang has made some conciliatory gestures to Seoul, including sending the delegation to Sunday's funeral and announcing Monday that it would reopen its border to South Korean tourists and allow reunions of divided families.

It also announced the re-establishment train links, which were severed late last year, and the easing of restrictions on commuter traffic to the jointly operated Kaesong industrial park.

A spokeswoman for the Defence Ministry in Seoul said, it remained unclear when the first freight train was to depart for Kaesong, located just across the border in North Korea.

Kim Dae Jung is to receive a state funeral, only the second in South Korea's history after the first was held in 1979 for former president and dictator Park Chung Hee, who was assassinated by his former intelligence chief while in office. (dpa)