SEOUL: The UN food aid agency said Thursday it has asked South Korea to contribute US$60 million to an expanded emergency programme for North Korea, triple its previous contribution.

The request comes as relations between the Cold War rivals are at their lowest ebb in a decade following the fatal shooting of a South Korean female tourist in North Korea's Mount Kumgang resort.

"Yes, we've sent a letter" to Seoul to that effect, Paul Risley, the World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman for Asia, told AFP.

It sought the contribution to help feed the most vulnerable such as children, women and the old, Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-Nyoun said separately.

South Korea will make its decision following consultations among relevant authorities and "take public opinion into account," he told a briefing.

"We don't link humanitarian aid to political issues such as the nuclear issue," Kim said in reference to North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

But he declined to comment on whether the July 11 shooting at Mount Kumgang would affect the decision.

In that incident one or more soldiers shot the middle-aged housewife in the back after she strayed into a restricted military zone during a dawn stroll on the beach.

The North has blamed the South for the shooting and refuses to let it send in an investigation team. South Korea cancelled tours to the resort.

Last month the WFP warned that hunger in North Korea is at its worst since the famine years of the 1990s, with five to six million people in immediate need out of a population of 23 million.

In a recently completed survey, it found that up to half the country was having to forage for foods and some were resorting to eating edible grasses and roots.

The WFP will make an international appeal for up to US$500 million in aid to begin flowing in September, Jean-Pierre de Margerie, its country director for North Korea, said at the time.

South Korea, with a US$20 million contribution, is the second largest donor to the WFP's current programme which ends August 31 and feeds about 1.2 million people.

The aid agency wants extra funds to expand the number helped to some 6.4 million.

- AFP/yb