SEOUL: A South Korean civic group sent 300 tonnes of flour to hungry North Korea on Tuesday, the second of what it said would be a series of weekly shipments amid calls by Pyongyang for food aid.

The Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation also sent a similar-sized shipment on July 26, the first flour aid since the North's shelling attack on a border island killed four South Koreans last November.

“We plan to send a similiar volume every week until late August to provide about 2,500 tonnes in total,” a council spokesman told AFP.

The food will be delivered to day-care centres and orphanages in the southwestern city of Sariwon, he said.

The South in 2008 stopped an annual government shipment of 400,000 tonnes of rice to its impoverished neighbour as cross-border relations soured under a conservative administration in Seoul.

Authorities allowed some civilian groups to keep sending aid, but suspended approval for flour shipments after the island attack last year. Seoul officials believe flour can be diverted easily to the military.

The communist North has relied on international aid to help feed its people since a famine in the 1990s killed hundreds of thousands.

This year it asked the United States and other nations for food aid as international assistance dwindled due to concern over its nuclear programmes and tensions with the South.

United Nations agencies have said that some six million people in the country urgently need food.

The European Union announced last month that it would deliver 10 million euros in emergency food aid to the country to help 650,000 people at risk of death from starvation.