SEOUL, May 24, 2009 (AFP) - North Korea Sunday broke its silence over the death of former South Korean president Roh Moo-Hyun, highlighting the pressure he faced as a result of a probe into corruption during his time in office.

The official Korean Central News Agency, citing South Korean and foreign news reports on his death, said in a two-sentence dispatch that Roh died on Saturday morning.

"Local and foreign media were relating the motives of his death to the psychological burden caused by prosecutors' coercive investigation," the report added.

Roh was questioned by prosecutors last month as a suspect in the corruption probe - the third former leader to be quizzed on graft charges after leaving office.

Pyongyang has yet to send any official condolences to Seoul over the death of Roh, who plunged to his death off a mountainside on Saturday after leaving a suicide note.

The former leader doggedly pursued reconciliation with the communist North despite its 2006 nuclear and missile tests and held a peace summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il the following year, only the second in the history of the two countries.

"The key to the peace strategy is the wisdom of co-existence. We should boldly and confidently engage North Korea. Confrontation will achieve nothing," he once said.

But critics said the South gave the North too much for too little in return.

Opponents charged that Roh, who held office from 2003-2008, failed to press the North hard enough on its nuclear weapons and poor human rights record.