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SEOUL:  A senior South Korean official said Friday “new progress” on North Korea could come within days, with a local report saying the Trump administration has decided to approve humanitarian sanctions exemptions for Pyongyang.

In a meeting with reporters in the US, the senior official said Seoul has made considerable efforts to bring North Korea to dialogue.

“There could be some new progress in the coming days” on North Korea, the government official said on condition of anonymity.

Washington has long demanded that Pyongyang give up its banned nuclear weapons programme, with the country under successive rounds of UN sanctions over it.

The South Korean senior official’s comments came while addressing US President Donald Trump’s scheduled trip to China in April.

Trump last year made repeated overtures to Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong Un during his barnstorming tour of Asia, saying he was “100%” open to a meeting and even bucking decades of US policy by conceding that North Korea was “sort of a nuclear power”.

North Korea did not respond to Trump’s offer and has repeatedly said it will never give up its nuclear weapons.

South Korea’s daily Dong-A Ilbo reported on Friday, citing Seoul’s unnamed government sources, that the Trump administration has decided to lift sanctions for humanitarian aid projects to North Korea at the UN Security Council’s 1718 Committee.

Analysts say the move would allow South Korea’s NGOs to provide humanitarian assistance – such as nutritional supplements, medical equipment and water purification systems – to North Korea, an impoverished state that has struggled to provide for its people.

Trump met North Korea’s Kim three times. The US leader once famously declared they were “in love” during his first term, in efforts to reach a denuclearisation deal.

But since a summit in Hanoi in 2019 fell through over differences about what Pyongyang would get in return for giving up its nuclear weapons, no progress has been made between the two countries.

Seoul and Washington earlier this week reaffirmed their commitment to North Korea’s “complete denuclearisation” and cooperation on Seoul’s nuclear-powered submarine plan, a move that has previously drawn an angry response from Pyongyang.

North Korea is set to hold a landmark congress of its ruling party soon, its first in five years.

Ahead of that conclave, Kim ordered the “expansion” and modernisation of the country’s missile production.