The head of the UN World Food Programme arrived on Tuesday in impoverished North Korea, said official media in the country, which relies on international handouts to help feed its people.

The communist North suffered famine in the 1990s which killed hundreds of thousands of people and still receives supplies from the World Food Programme (WFP), aid groups and countries.

The Korean Central News Agency gave no more details on the arrivals of WFP executive director Josette Sheeran and Jack Pritchard, Washington's special envoy to the North under former President George W. Bush.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, citing a diplomatic source, said Pritchard would stay in Pyongyang for three or four days for talks with North Korean officials.

Pritchard, who also served as senior director for Asian affairs for former President Bill Clinton, now heads the Washington-based Korea Economic Institute.

He is scheduled to visit South Korea next week for talks on his North Korea trip, which could be used to gauge the prospects of resuming six-party nuclear disarmament talks, Yonhap said.

Pyongyang in April 2009 quit the six-party forum, involving two Koreas, China, Japan, the US and Russia. A month later it conducted its second nuclear test.

The North has recently said it was willing in principle to return to the six-party talks. But Seoul and the United States say it must first improve cross-border ties and show a commitment to disarmament.

The United Nations predicts that Pyongyang will have to import 1.1 million tons of cereals this year. But UN agencies have raised only 20 percent of the 492 million dollars they estimated in 2009 would be needed for the North.

International donations have dwindled amid irritation over the regime's missile and nuclear programmes.