A top South Korean official offered Monday to hold high-level talks with North Korea in January, as Pyongyang battles growing pressure over human rights and a cyber row with the US.

A top South Korean official offered Monday to hold high-level talks with North Korea in January, as Pyongyang battles growing pressure over human rights and a cyber row with the US.

Ryoo Kihl-Jae, the South's unification minister in charge of North Korean affairs, said he was willing to meet in Seoul or the North's capital Pyongyang for the rare high-level talks.

Such mutual concerns include a reunion of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War and various events to mark the 70th anniversary of the division of the peninsula in 1945, he said.

The last round of formal high-level talks was held in February and resulted in the North hosting a rare union of relatives separated by the conflict.

The two Koreas had earlier agreed to restart dialogue when a top-ranking North Korean delegation made a surprise visit to the Asian Games held in the South in October.