By Yoon Won-sup
Staff Reporter

Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday said North Korea has showed a more open attitude to the outside world by actively asking for international aid following last week’s devastating explosion.

``I consider that the North has come to take a positive view of the international community as it has increased exchanges and contact with foreign countries and organizations,’’ Ban said in a interview with a KBS radio program.

Ban went on to say that the recent accident in Ryongchon was such a huge disaster that the communist regime must have judged international assistance to be essential to its relief and recovery.

In an unusually swift move, North Korea made a formal appeal for help from the international community only one day after Thursday’s train explosion, which killed about 161 people and wounded 1,300.

The Seoul government is planning to send aid to Pyongyang.

The minister also said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s visit to the Chinese port city of Tianjin, a special economic zone, last week indicates his willingness to continue to pursue market-oriented economic reform.

In 2002, North Korea introduced some elements of market economy, phasing out its decades-old food rationing system, raising wages and lifting the prices of goods sold at farmers’ markets.

Asked where the additional ROK troops will be deployed in Iraq, Ban answered, ``The government is still reviewing the candidate locations, and the final site will be decided within this week or next week.’’

As security concerns grew in the Middle Eastern country, the government changed its originally planned dispatch site.

yoonwonsup@koreatimes.co.kr