A United Nations food agency team arrived in South Korea Monday to brief officials about North Korea's food situation, following a UN report that a quarter of its population urgently needs aid.

The four World Food Programme (WFP) delegates led by Terri Toyota, the director of government donor relations, will meet senior foreign and unification ministry officials on Wednesday, ministry spokesmen said.

South Korea, which in 2008 halted an annual shipment of 400,000 tonnes of rice, began sending limited emergency aid following last year's floods. It halted the shipments when the North shelled a border island last November.

Officials from the WFP and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation began a visit to the North last month to assess the food situation after Pyongyang appealed for international aid.

In a report last week, the agencies said more than six million people urgently need assistance because of substantial falls in domestic production, in food imports and in overseas aid.

Donations to UN food aid programmes for the North have dwindled due to international irritation at its missile and nuclear programmes.

The North has appealed to 40 countries for food aid, a Seoul government official said this month.

Some Seoul officials say last year's harvest was relatively good, and Pyongyang may be trying to stockpile food for celebrations next year of the 100th anniversary of the birth of founding president Kim Il-Sung.