North Korea makes first training visit to South

SEOUL, March 20 (Reuters) - North Korea sent its first national sports team to the South for training on Tuesday as the two Koreas discuss how to compete together in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The North Korean under-17 soccer squad will start its month of training in the resort island of Cheju in preparation for the FIFA U-17 World Cup to be held in South Korea in August and September.

A South Korean Unification Ministry official said the training visit was unprecedented.

"It is very easy to speculate this will have an immensely positive influence on the two Koreas forming a joint (Olympic) team, but at this point it is too early to tell," said the official, who asked not to be named.

During their stay, organised by a private group that wants to promote inter-Korean sports cooperation, the North Koreans will also play friendlies, including a match against South Korea's under-17 side.

Talks on a joint Korean team for the Beijing Games have been in the works for more than a year but have hit delays due the political fallout from Pyongyang's defiant missile test in July 2006 followed by its first nuclear test in October.

Still technically at war because the 1950-1953 Korean War ended with only a truce, North and South Korea first considered competing together at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. But years of acrimony and military tension have prevented it from happening.

The South, with better-funded sports programmes and more world-class athletes, wants to field the most competitive team possible.

North Korea wants to field a joint team with equal representation of athletes from the North and South.

The two Koreas have marched together in opening ceremonies at previous Olympics before competing as separate teams.

North and South Korea competed as a single team in an aborted experiment in soccer and table tennis in the early 1990s.