CORRECTED: North Korea sends mourners to South

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (C) visits the rebuilt Kujang fish farm at an undisclosed place in North Korea, in this undated picture released on August 19, 2009 by the country's official news agency KCNA. KCNA did not state when the picture was taken.

(Corrects former President Kim Dae-jung's age to 85 in third paragraph)

By Jonathan Thatcher

SEOUL (Reuters) - Reclusive North Korea confirmed on Thursday that it would send a delegation to the South to mourn former President Kim Dae-jung, who died earlier this week, in the latest sign of easing tensions with the outside world.

Separately, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, speaking on Wednesday after meeting North Korean diplomats in Santa Fe, said Pyongyang was sending "good signals."

Kim, who died on Tuesday aged 85, was awarded the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize for brokering the same year the first summit between the leaders of the rival Koreas.

North Korea's KCNA news agency said leader Kim Jong-il had approved the August 21-22 visit, headed by Kim Ki Nam, secretary of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party.

Kim Jong-il had earlier sent a message of condolence to the former president's family, praising his efforts to reunite the two Koreas, divided since the end of World War Two.

Ties between the rival Koreas have all headed back into the freezer since conservative President Lee Myung-bak took power in the South 18 months ago, cutting off aid to the North until it renounced nuclear weapons.

The decision to send the delegation is the latest in a series of conciliatory steps which follow months of military grandstanding, including a nuclear test in May, that have deepened the impoverished state's isolation from the outside world.

The first step this month was to release two jailed American journalists following a visit to Pyongyang by former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

HOPE FOR THAW

New Mexico Governor Richardson, who met representatives from the North Korean mission to the United Nations, said Pyongyang hoped the Clinton visit would lead to a thaw in relations with the United States.

"The North Koreans are sending good signals, that they're ready to talk directly to the United States," Richardson said on CNN. "They felt that the President Clinton visit was good, that it helped thaw relations, make them easier."

"I detected for the first time ... a lessening of tension, some positive vibration," he said.

Clinton was the most senior U.S. envoy in nearly a decade to travel to Pyongyang and meet Kim Jong-il.

Richardson said the North Koreans had indicated that they felt the decision to pardon journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling and allow them to go back to the United States with Clinton had been a "gesture on their part" and they felt they were now owed a gesture by the United States.

He said the North Koreans had indicated they wanted to have a dialogue with the United States though Washington wants Pyongyang to return to six-party talks to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

Richardson said his meeting with them took place at the request of the North Koreans, who had to get special approval to travel away from the New York area.

He said he was not negotiating on behalf of the Obama administration but would serve as a liaison and convey the North Koreans' comments.

North Korean leader Kim also this month met the head of South Korea's powerful Hyundai Group, a major investor in the North.

That meeting helped win the release of a Hyundai worker detained since March and agreement to resume tourism to the North and reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

(Additional reporting by Deborah Charles in Washington)