North Korea Wednesday expressed regret to South Korea over the death of six people swept away by a cross-border flood, in a rare admission of blame by the hard-line communist state.

Seoul's presidential office welcomed the statement as a "positive signal" that relations were thawing after months of frosty ties.

The comments came during talks between the two sides on flood-control measures. The meeting went ahead despite the North's short-range missile tests on Monday. Separate talks are scheduled for Friday on family reunions.

In an incident that stirred anger in the South, the North on September 6 released millions of tonnes of water from a dam across the Imjin River, drowning the South Koreans camping or fishing downstream.

The North had said a sudden surge in the dam water level prompted an emergency release, but the South called for an apology and measures to prevent a recurrence.

"Literally speaking, the North expressed regrets and condolences," an official from Seoul's unification ministry told Yonhap news agency, in a briefing on the talks at Kaesong just north of the heavily fortified border.

"But in the general context, we think it's an apology by North Korea with regard to this incident."

The North expressed "deep condolences" to families of the six victims, the official said on condition of anonymity, and reiterated it had been forced to open the floodgates urgently.

The talks ended Wednesday afternoon but the two sides agreed to meet again at a yet-to-be-determined date.

There have been unannounced dam discharges by the North almost every year but this year's was the first to claim lives.

The two nations have remained technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended only in an armistice, and the North rarely expresses regret for its actions.

When a North Korean soldier shot dead a South Korean housewife at a resort in the North in July last year, Pyongyang blamed Seoul for the incident and demanded it apologise. The woman had strayed into a military zone.

On Monday the North test-fired five missiles, the first launches in more than three months, but the unification ministry had said talks would not be affected.

For more than a year Pyongyang was bitterly hostile to the South's conservative government, which scrapped a "sunshine" aid and engagement policy with its impoverished neighbour.

Relations were also strained by the North's nuclear and missile tests in the spring, but it began making peace overtures in August.

In recent weeks it has freed five South Korean detainees, eased curbs on the operations of a joint industrial estate, sent envoys for talks with President Lee Myung-Bak and given the go-ahead for the family reunion programme.

Hundreds of relatives separated since the war held tearful brief reunions two weeks ago, the first such event in two years.

The South, in talks scheduled Friday at Kaesong, will seek to make the reunions a regular event because thousands of people are dying of old age before they get a chance to meet loved ones on the other side of the border.

Rodong Sinmun, newspaper of the North's ruling party, called on Wednesday for better inter-Korean relations.

"It is the unwavering will of our republic to proactively realise reconciliation, unity, cooperation and exchanges according to the joint declarations" of past inter-Korean summits, it said.

AFP

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