SEOUL : South Korea said Thursday it wants direct talks with North Korea to discuss how to provide badly needed food aid, apparently softening its position that the communist state must first ask for help.

"If we have a chance, we will talk directly to Pyongyang" on food aid, Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan told reporters.

President Lee Myung-Bak's conservative government, which has been vilified by the North for its tougher stance, has so far said it will provide humanitarian aid only after Pyongyang requests it.

Some analysts believe the North is on the verge of famine and its leader Kim Jong-Il appears to have admitted there is a crisis.

"At this time, there is no more urgent and important task than resolving the issue of feeding the people," Pyongyang's state-controlled Chung-Ang TV on Wednesday quoted him as saying.

Kim blamed his nation's limited arable land. He called for crop yields to be "decisively raised to settle the food problem," the official Korean Central News Agency reported separately.

He was speaking during a "guidance tour" of a farm in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong near the border with China. Many refugees who enter China illegally to seek food are from the province.

South Korean officials held talks in Washington this week on possible food aid.

The US State Department has said it is working on a new food aid proposal which includes better monitoring of distribution, but no agreement had yet been reached.

It was responding to report that the United States has agreed to large-scale food aid after progress in diplomatic efforts to scrap its nuclear programmes.

A US think tank, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, warned this month that the North is at risk of outright famine -- ten years after up to one million of its people died of starvation.

"Statistics on North Korea's society are not accurate. We are in consultations with related nations and international agencies on the assessment of the food situation," Foreign Minister Yu said.

Chronic food shortages worsened this year due to soaring grain prices, crop damage following floods last summer, and dwindling donations from the outside world.

However, the prospect of the North asking the South for food aid is remote considering Pyongyang has branded Lee as a "traitor."

A senior member of Lee's Grand National Party called for unconditional aid.

"Many of our brothers are starving to death in North Korea," the party's parliamentary leader Ahn Sang-Soo said. "The government should help those people by providing unconditional humanitarian aid to the North."

- AFP/vm