Seoul sees NKorea's overtures as tactical changes

North Korea's recent conciliatory gestures do not represent any fundamental changes because the communist country has shown no signs of ending its nuclear weapons program, a top South Korean official said Wednesday.

In April, North Korea quit six-nation talks - involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan - aimed at ending its nuclear program. North Korea then conducted its second nuclear test in May, drawing international condemnation and new U.N. sanctions.

But the North has been reaching out to Seoul and Washington in recent weeks, freeing some detainees, agreeing to restart reunions of Korean family separated by the 1950-53 Korean War and restoring regular traffic to a joint industrial park in the North.

In another conciliatory move, the two Koreas restored a military hot line in the western section of their heavily fortified border Wednesday. The North had cut the line last year.

However, Unification Minister Hyun In-taek told ruling party lawmakers that the North's recent overtures are "just tactical changes because the North has neither declared its return to the six-nation talks nor changed its position" on its nuclear program.

Hyun is South Korea's point person on the North.

The North views its nuclear program as a security guarantee against what it claims is U.S. hostility and its alleged plans to attack Pyongyang. The North has called for one-on-one negotiations with Washington on the nuclear program. The U.S. has said it is willing to hold direct talks with Pyongyang but only on the sidelines of the six-nation disarmament talks.

China, the North's main ally, on Tuesday expressed hope for progress on the nuclear issue, as North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il arrived in Beijing on a visit to mark 60 years of diplomatic ties between the countries. His delegation held talks with Foreign Ministry officials.

"As the situation in Northeast Asia has recently shown signs of thawing, we expect all parties involved in the Korean nuclear talks to seize this opportunity to continuously transform the situation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news conference.

Relations between the two Koreas have been strained since last year when conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office. He wants to hold the North accountable for its nuclear disarmament commitments in return for aid. However, he has recently stressed Seoul's commitment to helping North Korea if the North shows a willingness to change.

A South Korean province has sent about 2,200 tons of corn to North Korea via China to help ease the impoverished neighbor's food shortages, an official at the Gyeonggi provincial government told The Associated Press.

The assistance was sent this week at the request of a South Korean private aid group, he said, requesting anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to media. The provincial government has been pursuing agricultural cooperation with the North.

Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung, however, said the province's move was unrelated to the central government, which has been a key food donor to the North in recent years, but not since Lee took office.

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AP Television News cameraman Yong-ho Kim in Seoul and AP writer Chi-Chi Zhang in Beijing contributed to this report.