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United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on South Korea's government to resume food aid to the North Korea during a press conference on Thursday.

After meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry and members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C., Ban said, “It’s time for the South Korean government to positively consider giving food aid to North Korea.”

"I am deeply concerned that food situation in North Korea has seriously worsened."

Ban’s remark came after The UN Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Program and UNICEF last week called for 470,000 tons of international food aid to North Korea in an assessment report on North Korea's food crisis in March.

Apparently growing impatient with South Korea's lukewarm response to its dialogue offer, North Korea announced Friday that it would terminate an exclusive contract with a South Korean conglomerate for tourism at Mt. Kumgang, a resort along its east coast.

In a statement carried by the official news agency KCNA, the Asia Pacific Peace Committee, a state organ in charge of inter-Korean relations, said, "Now, there is no chance any more for the resumption of the Mount Kumgang tour."

It said it was nullifying the exclusive right it had granted to Hyundai in a contract for the tourism business. The committee said the North will be in charge of organizing tours to the scenic mountain through its soil, indicating it will look for a foreign business partner.

Meanwhile, a senior South Korean official on Friday downplayed the level of progress made in the construction of a purported light-water reactor at North Korea's main nuclear complex after a satellite image suggested the communist state might be building another reactor.

"It doesn't seem that another light-water reactor is being built," the government official said in a meeting with reporters, asking not to be named. The satellite image, taken March 24 and disclosed by South Korea's state broadcaster KBS on Thursday night, showed a fresh construction site near what appeared to be an up to 40-meter-tall structure that the North claims is a lighter-water nuclear reactor.

(Yonhap News)

South Korea’s producer price index rose 7.3 percent in March from a year earlier, at the fastest pace since the 7.8-percent increase in November 2008, the Bank of Korea (BOK) said Friday.

According to the central bank, the sharp producer price inflation, up from a 6.6 percent rise in February, mainly resulted from soaring prices of imported goods including skyrocketing oil price.

The producer prices are expected to be reflected on consumer prices in two to three months which already jumped 4.7 percent last month.

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