U.S. daily the Washington Post says the meeting between President Lee Myung-bak and the North Korean delegation who visited Seoul to pay respects to late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung suggests there may be a change in relations between the two Koreas.

The report titled “North Korea Calls for Better Ties With South” said the 30-minute meeting suggested the communist state is “retreating from a campaign of insults, threats and saber-rattling that it launched when Lee Myung-bak assumed the presidency 18 months ago.”

The Washington Post said that for reasons not well understood, the North embarked this month on something of a “charm offensive” noting that the country has released two U.S. journalists, freed a South Korean worker, agreed to resume reunions of families divided by the North-South border and promised to restart cross-border businesses.

It said a possible reason for North Korea's new flexibility could be lack of food. It quoted U.N. food agencies as saying that 37 percent of the country's 23-point-five million people will need aid this year.