SEOUL - SOUTH Korea on Friday approved a request from farmers and labour activists to send rice to the impoverished communist North despite frosty political relations.

The unification ministry, which handles cross-border ties, said it would allow the Korea Peasants League to ship 162 tonnes of rice to North Korea this week.

The shipment includes 60 tonnes of rice donated by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, a militant labour group.

The two groups have demanded the government legalise the regular delivery of rice aid to North Korea.

The South last year did not make its customary shipment of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rice and fertiliser because the North failed to request the deliveries.

But private aid to the food-starved hardline communist nation has continued despite the virtual breakdown of government-to-government relations.

Two United Nations agencies have predicted that about 40 per cent of North Korea's people - an estimated 8.7 million people - will urgently need food aid because of an expected cereals deficit in coming months.

They said the shortages would be felt hardest by children, women who are pregnant or have recently given birth, and the elderly.

Inter-Korean ties began to worsen after South Korea's conservative President Lee Myung-Bak took office in February last year.

He rolled back his liberal predecessors' engagement policy and linked major economic assistance to the North's willingness to make progress on dismantling its nuclear weapons programme.

The North has suspended all government-level talks in response. Last month it expelled hundreds of South Korean workers from a Seoul-funded industrial estate and imposed strict border controls. -- AFP