Officials from South and North Korea met secretly last week to discuss a possible summit, ranking South Korean officials said Thursday.

The state broadcaster KBS confirmed the report, saying the meeting was held in Singapore.

The presidential office of Cheong Wa Dae, however, declined to comment on the report.

The KBS report said a ranking South Korean official recently visited Singapore for a meeting with Kim Yang-gon, Pyongyang's point man on Seoul, who was seen arriving in Beijing last Thursday from a trip to an undisclosed nation.

Media speculation about plans for a summit has grown since Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao met the North's leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang early this month.

Wen said Kim expressed his desire to improve ties with the South, after months of hostility.

The two Koreas held summit talks in 2000 and 2007.

But relations worsened when conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in Seoul in February 2008 and took a tougher line on the North, linking major aid and economic cooperation to its nuclear disarmament.

Ties soured further after the North's second nuclear test in May, and a series of missile tests, which brought tougher United Nations sanctions.

Pyongyang since August has made a series of conciliatory gestures in what some analysts see as an attempt to restart cross-border business projects to ease the impact of sanctions.

The North has freed five South Korean detainees, eased curbs on the operations of a joint industrial estate, sent envoys for talks with Lee and given the go-ahead for the resumption of a family reunion program.