The government says it is looking to confirm North Korea's statement that last week's explosion in the North was a demolition related to the construction of a power plant.

In the first comment by a senior Northern official on the incident, Foreign Minister Baek Nam-sun reportedly told visiting British Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell Monday that the explosion was generated during the construction of a hydro-electric power plant.

Seoul's Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told reporters ahead of Tuesday's Cabinet meeting that the government "is still working to verify" the reliability of the North's claim.

National Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung said the explosion was not related to a nuclear weapons test, as some foreign news media have speculated.

Yoon said the South Korean and U.S. governments share the view that it was almost certainly not a nuclear test, as the North was not likely to detonate a nuclear bomb so close to its border with China.

The defense minister said the two governments are planning to take additional satellite pictures of the blast site to verify its exact cause.

The South Korean government said Monday that it had taken several satellite pictures of a mushroom-shaped cloud over the explosion site and had delivered prints of the blast to U.S. intelligence officials for analysis.