South Korea will give North food 'if it asks'

President Lee Myung-bak also said South Koreans were prepared to meet officials from the North any time to try to resolve issues.

"We would help North Korea if it moves toward changes," Lee said in a televised speech marking the 28th anniversary of the pro-democracy movement.

Lee did not elaborate, but his comments appeared to be a call for the North to propose a meeting to ask the South for food aid.

South Korea has made clear that Pyongyang needs to make a formal request for food, but the North has refused to ask the previously key donor because of anger over Lee's hard-line stance toward North Korea.

"If South Korea provides food, North Korea has no reason not to accept it. But North Korea will never ask for it first," an unidentified official from the North told a group of South Koreans who recently visited Pyongyang, said the South's Yonhap news agency.

Separately, North Korea on Saturday welcomed a U.S. offer of 500,000 tons of food aid, saying it would help alleviate shortages and improve relations between Washington and Pyongyang.

North Korea has relied on aid to help feed its 23 million people since natural disasters and mismanagement devastated its economy in the mid-1990s. Famine is believed to have killed 2 million people.

A food shortage has worsened because of devastating floods last year.