North Korea withdrew on Tuesday its threat to skip the world student games in South Korea, a boycott prompted by Pyongyang's anger at the burning of a North Korean flag at protests in Seoul last week, South Korean media said.

Following an apology by South Korea's president, Yonhap news agency and YTN television said North Korea would send a delegation to the August 21-31 Universiade Games in the southeastern city of Taegu.

Games organizers contacted by telephone said they were trying to confirm the reports with the South Korean Unification Ministry, Seoul's main conduit for dealing with the North. The ministry said it was also seeking information.

Earlier on Tuesday, President Roh Moo-hyun expressed regret at the August 15 incident and asked his unification minister to convey the apology and try to convince North Korea to change its mind.

"It is improper to burn North Korea's national flag and the portrait of leader Kim Jong-il. I feel regretful over this," the spokeswoman quoted him as saying.

"I hope this will not happen again in the future," he said.

North Korea said on Monday it would not send its planned 218-member delegation of athletes and officials because their safety could not be guaranteed after anti-North demonstrations in Seoul on August 15, Korea's Liberation Day.

Last Friday, the 58th anniversary of former colonial ruler Japan's World War II surrender, several thousand mostly elderly South Koreans rallied to condemn the North's Kim and his quest to build nuclear weapons.

Some activists at the peaceful rally burned a N. Korea national flag and a poster of Kim.

Pyongyang's boycott came days before six-country talks to try to halt the North's nuclear weapons programs. The two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia, and Japan are set to open talks in Beijing on August 27.

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