By Jeremy Laurence
SEOUL (Reuters) - Rights envoy Robert King became the first U.S. official to visit secretive North Korea in 17 months on Tuesday, as Washington considers whether to resume food aid and as momentum builds to resume nuclear disarmament talks.
King is leading a team of five people on the trip to evaluate the destitute North's pleas for food, which have been questioned by South Korea and some high profile U.S. senators.
In a one sentence dispatch, North Korea's KCNA state news agency said King had arrived "to consult humanitarian issues" between North Korea and the United States.
Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. special envoy for North Korea, was the last American official to visit Pyongyang in December 2009.
The United States is under pressure to resume food aid after the United Nations said in a report this year that more than 6 million North Koreans urgently need help.
Washington has stressed that King's trip does not mean a resumption of aid is imminent.
"However, since North Korea sees U.S. decisions on humanitarian aid through a political lens, the food aid assessment might be treated in Pyongyang as a political signal that the Obama administration might finally be open to a broader political dialogue with North Korea," wrote North Korea expert Scott Snyder on the Council of Foreign Relations website.
King's visit, the first by a U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights since the job's inception in 2004, comes as North Korea leader Kim Jong-il tours ally China on a trip to "study" its economic development.
It is Kim's third visit to China in just over a year.
Diplomats and analysts say the North, squeezed by international sanctions for nuclear and missile tests in 2009, will probably also ask for more food and economic aid from its main benefactor.
In return, experts expect China to press the North to join the South in bilateral talks as a prelude to regional denuclearisation talks, stalled for more than two years after Pyongyang walked out over a new round of U.N. sanctions.
China says the so-called six party talks between it, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and the United States are the best diplomatic forum to resolve all issues on the peninsula, not just denuclearisation.
Tension spiked last year after two deadly attacks killed 50 South Koreans.
SEOUL SCEPTICAL
Last month, after a trip to the North, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter accused Seoul and Washington of human rights abuses for denying the North aid.
The United States suspended food supplies to the North in 2008 over a monitoring dispute and has said it will only resume them with the South's agreement.
Critics of aid say the North has siphoned off food in the past to feed its million-strong army, and South Korea says the North's food stocks are at the same levels as last year.
Officials in Seoul also suspect North Korea wants to hoard food ahead of a third nuclear test, which would likely provoke a further tightening of international sanctions.
King is also expected to raise broader human rights issues with North Korean officials, as well as the case of an American citizen detained in North Korea since November on charges of doing missionary work.
Meanwhile, China declined to confirm Kim's visit was taking place, but reiterated that Beijing and Pyongyang were "friendly neighbours."
Kim visited China, his country's sole major supporter, last year in early May and then in August. In the past, neither side has openly confirmed his visits until they are over. China has sought to shore up ties with the North in recent years with more aid and trade and visits there by leaders.
"China and North Korea have constantly maintained high-level contacts, and I'm sure the relevant departments will release information at an appropriate time," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular news briefing in Beijing.
"Everybody should note that the specific arrangements for visits to China are based on custom and respecting the arrangements of the visiting foreign leader.
"China and North Korea are friendly neighbours and continuing to consolidate and develop our neighbourly friendship is the unwavering policy of the Chinese party and government."
Kim's latest train journey to China began on Friday and has taken him through China's northeast and the eastern province of Jiangsu, where his entourage travelled to the provincial capital, Nanjing, on Tuesday.
(Additional reporting by Royston Chan in Nanjing and Sabrina Mao in Beijing; Editing by Robert Birsel)
