South Korea can offer medicine and technology to help North Korea contain its bird flu outbreak, government officials said on Monday, and a local analyst said the reclusive state probably could not battle the virus alone.

In an official media report on Sunday, North Korea confirmed an outbreak of bird flu at two chicken farms in the capital Pyongyang. It said hundreds of thousands of birds had been culled in the country, which has suffered from severe food shortages.

“We are ready to offer medication, equipment and technology, if asked,” said Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo, adding Pyongyang had not contacted South Korea about the outbreak.

Rhee said South Korea will also take preventive steps to ensure the virus does not spread south of its border with North Korea. Seoul is requesting accurate information from the North on the outbreak to best tailor any help it may offer.

An official with the World Health Organisation said the group had been contacted by Pyongyang about the outbreak and they would coordinate work on counter-measures.

It is not clear whether the strain of virus involved is H5N1, which has been known to jump from birds to humans, and has killed 49 people since 2003.

“We do not know yet what strain it may be, but it could be the H5N1 strain,” said Dr. Kumara Rai, director of communicable diseases for the WHO in Southeast Asia.

The WHO has an office in Pyongyang, Rai said, adding that North Korea moved effectively to counter SARS when it swept through Asia and other parts of the world in 2003. He was encouraged by early reports the North had eradicated poultry.

“This is a good sign that they are moving quickly,” Rai said by telephone from his office in India.

North Korea’s state media said no humans had been infected.

“A dynamic work is now underway across the country to combat bird flu,” the official newspaper Rodong Simun reported on Monday.

CALL FOR HELP

Kim Young-hoon, a senior fellow at the state-run Korea Rural Economic Institute in Seoul, said the outbreak may have got out of hand and the North had gone public to get international help.

“North Korea came to admit the bird flu cases to receive international help. Based on the North’s announcement, we also suspect North Korea has reached the stage that they could not control the disease any more,” Kim said.

South Korea’s unification, health and agriculture ministry are discussing Seoul’s response, which will probably include tightening quarantine measures on visitors and vehicles.

There are two main points of contact where South Koreans can head to the North. The first is a joint industrial complex just north of the demilitarised zone and the second is a mountain resort in the North operated by a South Korean venture.

South Korean businesses operate factories in the North Korean city of Kaesong, a fledgling industrial complex 10 km (6 miles) north of the heavily militarised border, the demilitarised zone. Kaesong is also less than 200 km south of Pyongyang.

South Korea’s Hyundai Asan corporation runs a resort at Mount Kumgang, just north of the border on the east coast. The resort has been visited by over 800,000 people since 1998.

North Korea’s confirmation came after reports by businessmen working in the country of a likely bird flu outbreak in the secretive state. That led Seoul to indefinitely suspend planned imports of North Korean chicken.

A 40-tonne shipment scheduled to arrive on March 17 was to be the first shipment.

Japan, which had been importing small amounts of North Korean poultry, has also suspended imports.

South Korea had 19 confirmed cases of the H5N1 strain between December 2003 and March 2004, but no human infections.

The two Koreas are technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce and not a full peace treaty.