SEOUL, KOREA - Officials from South and North Korea met secretly last week to discuss a possible summit, a news report said Thursday.

The meeting was held in Singapore, broadcaster KBS quoted sources as saying. Presidential officials could not be reached for comment.

Media speculation about plans for a summit has grown since Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao met the North's leader Kim Jong-Il in Pyongyang early this month.

Wen said Kim expressed a desire to improve ties with the South, after months of hostility.

The two Koreas held summit talks in 2000 and 2007.

But relations worsened when conservative President Lee Myung-Bak took office in Seoul in February 2008 and took a tougher line on the North, linking major aid and economic cooperation to its nuclear disarmament.

Ties soured further after the North's second nuclear test in May, and a series of missile tests, which brought tougher United Nations sanctions.

Pyongyang since August has made a series of conciliatory gestures in what some analysts see as an attempt to restart cross-border business projects to ease the impact of sanctions.

The North has freed five South Korean detainees, eased curbs on the operations of a joint industrial estate, sent envoys for talks with Lee and given the go-ahead for the resumption of a family reunion programme.

-AFP