S. Korean leader meets visitors from North

SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea's president met a high-level delegation from North Korea amid signs of warming ties on the divided peninsula.

The meeting took place late Saturday, which was Sunday in South Korea.

Relations between the Koreas have been largely frozen since conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office last year with a tougher line on the North amid the international standoff over its nuclear ambitions.

However, there have been increasing signs of warming ties between the rival countries this month.

Pyongyang on Aug. 13 released a South Korean worker at a jointly operated industrial complex in North Korea who had been held for months amid allegations he denounced the Pyongyang government. Days later the North also promised to hold more inter-Korean family reunions, restart suspended tours for South Koreans to the North and "energize" a troubled joint industrial project.

The North also dispatched the delegation of senior officials to pay respects after the death of former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung.

On Sunday, Lee held talks with the North Korean delegation at his office, said a presidential Blue House official who spoke on condition of anonymity citing department policy.

The official didn't provide further details.

Yonhap news agency reported Saturday, without citing a source, that the North Koreans were expected to deliver a message from leader Kim Jong Il and outline Pyongyang's plan to release four South Korean fishermen seized in July. They would also convey the North's position on resuming official dialogue.

North Korea regularly blasts Lee as a "traitor" and "human scum" and accuses South Korea of conniving with the United States to attack it with nuclear weapons. But Pyongyang has recently offered a series of olive branches to Seoul in an apparently concerted effort to improve relations.

Paik Hak-soon, an analyst at the Sejong Institute, a security think tank near Seoul, said today's meeting would help mend fences between the Koreas.

"South Korea should not miss the last opportunity made by former President Kim Dae-jung's death," he said, referring to the fact that the North Koreans would not have visited Seoul had it not been for the passing of the former leader who was respected on both sides of the border.