North Korea's Asia-Pacific Peace Committee sent a written message to South Korea's Ministry of Unification to open the north-south dialogue at an early date.

The APPC also suggested Red Cross delegates from both sides discuss humanitarian issues, such as reuniting families that have been separated since the 1953 cease-fire line created the two Koreas.

"Now is the time for the authorities of the North and the South to sit face to face and have exhaustive and constructive talks now that the (North) Korean People's Army's magnanimous proposal for holding high-level military talks removed all the hurdles lying in the way of the inter-Korean dialogue," the APPC message said.

North Korea "urged once again the South side to seek a sincere negotiated settlement of humanitarian issues, including the reunion of separated families and relatives and all other issues of mutual concern."

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak welcomed the move by North Korea as a "good chance" to improve relations that may lead to ministerial talks this year.

"I can hold a summit if necessary," Lee said in a television talk show.

"For North Korea, now is a good opportunity to show a change in its attitude. We plan to start working-level dialogue and test (North Korea's) seriousness. If (the North) seeks sincere dialogue, rather than military provocations, we can have dialogue, and resume economic exchanges and talks about the six-way talks."

Talks are tentatively planned Feb. 8 but a South Korean Unification Ministry official downplayed the outcome unless North Korea is willing to discuss its denuclearization.

"We don't plan to respond to the proposal," he said on condition of anonymity. "It is no different from earlier proposals that we have dismissed as lacking substance."

The latest offer by North Korea comes after a more general proposal at the beginning of January when the communist government said it is prepared to unconditionally restart the stalled inter-Korean negotiations.

"We do not want to see the present South Korean authorities pass the five-year term of their office idly without North-South dialogue," North Korea's Committee for Peaceful Reunification of Korea said in a written statement to the official government media outlet Korean Central News Agency.

"There is neither conditionality in the North's proposal for dialogue nor need to cast any doubt about its real intention."

Pyongyang suggested at the time that the talks take place in Kaesong, the main town in the Kaesong Industrial Region on the two countries' border. The industrial park project was set up in 2002 as a special economic zone where South Korean firms are allowed to set up a business to take advantage of cheap North Korean labor.

Western countries and North Korea's main ally China will welcome the restarting of a dialogue this month between the two Korean governments after relations between the countries plummeted in the last half of last year.

In November, an aggressive war of words erupted between the two countries -- which never signed a peace treaty after the 1953 armistice and officially remain at war -- after North Korea unexpectedly shelled the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong in the Yellow Sea and several miles from the North's mainland.

Dozens of houses and several military buildings were damaged in the attack that killed two South Korean marines and two civilians and injured at least 20 people. South Korean forces returned fire but there were no known causalities.

Even before the shelling, military relations had been tense. In March, South Korea blamed North Korea for the sinking of the 1,200-ton South Korean patrol boat Cheonan and the loss of 46 sailors.

North Korea repeatedly denied it had sunk the vessel, despite an international investigating team that said it found strong evidence that the Cheonan, which split in half, was hit by a torpedo of North Korean manufacture.

This month's talks, if they go ahead, could lead to the revival of the stalled six-nation talks to denuclearize North Korea. The talks, which involve the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, China and the United States, were abruptly halted in April 2009, shortly before North Korea conducted a test nuclear explosion.

North Korea always has maintained its nuclear development is for peaceful and defensive purposes, as well as maintained the number of its nuclear facilities as a secret.

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