Seoul will vote for the resolution to be presented at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva this week, Yonhap news agency and Chosun Ilbo newspaper said.

A foreign ministry spokesman said he was checking the reports.

During a decade of liberal rule dedicated to rapprochement, Seoul largely refrained from criticising the hardline communist state's rights record.

In November 2006, following the North's missile and nuclear tests earlier that year, South Korea voted for a UN General Assembly draft resolution criticising its rights violations. But it abstained in a similar vote last year.

The change in Seoul's stance was heralded with the launch of the conservative Lee Myung-Bak government a month ago. The president has said he will take a pragmatic approach to inter-Korean relations but will press the Pyongyang regime on its rights record.

On Tuesday South Korea's human rights agency had said it would launch a probe into abuses in North Korea by interviewing defectors.

The vote in Geneva is expected to take place on Thursday or Friday at the end of the council's four-week session.

The draft resolution expresses 'deep concern' at the 'continuing reports of systematic, widespread and grave violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights' in North Korea, and notes international concern relating to the unresolved abduction of foreigners.

It urges Pyongyang to respect fully all human rights and fundamental freedoms and ensure safe and unhindered access to humanitarian aid.

The resolution also calls for the extension by one year of the mandate of Vitit Muntarbhorn, the UN's special rapporteur on North Korean human rights, Yonhap said.

The North objects to the Thai professor's mandate and refuses him permission to enter the country.

The North warned that relations might slip back into confrontation after a South Korean envoy told the rights council in Geneva this month that the North should improve its rights record.

The US State Department's 2007 human rights report says North Korea's record remained poor and the regime continued to commit numerous serious abuses.

It cited reports of extrajudicial killings, disappearances and arbitrary detention, including of political prisoners, harsh prison conditions and the use of torture. -- AFP