Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Stephen Evans says the "out of the blue" visit suggests a hint of changed attitudes in North Korea 
 
 North and South Korea have agreed to resume formal high-level talks that had effectively been suspended since February, reports from South Korea say. 
 
 The agreement came during a surprise visit to South Korea by North Korean officials for the closing ceremony of the Asian Games. 
 
 The visit was led by two top-ranking North Korean officials seen as close aides to leader Kim Jong-un. 
 
 Both sides were said to have agreed to meet again within the next few weeks. 
 
 Hwang Pyong-so, seen as the second-most powerful man in North Korea, held talks with Ryoo Kihl-jae, the South's reunification minister, on Saturday after flying to Incheon to attend the sporting event. 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption Both sides agreed to hold high-level talks before the end of the year to try to improve relations 
 
 Mr Hwang is the top political officer at the Korean People's Army. The other two members of the North's delegation were Choe Ryong-hae and Kim Yang-gon - key members of the ruling Workers' Party. 
 
 It is not known what was discussed at the meeting and neither party has commented publicly on the talks. 
 
 A change of tack 
 
 The BBC's Stephen Evans in Seoul says the talks are something of a breakthrough given the level of insult thrown at the South by the North in recent years. 
 
 Relations between the two have been practically non-existent for four years, but the North's economic troubles seem to have forced a change of tack, our correspondent adds. 
 
 The two Koreas remain technically at war because the 1950-53 conflict was ended with a truce. 
 
 The surprise meeting comes amid ongoing speculation about the health of the North's leader. 
 
 Mr Kim has not been seen in public since 3 September. A recent official documentary showed him limping. 
 
 Meanwhile, North Korea's ambassador to the UN, So Se Pyong, said on Friday that the country was ready to resume talks on its nuclear programme. 
 
 In an interview with Reuters news agency, Mr So also said the North was not planning any missile or nuclear tests. 
 
 North Korea pledged to abandon its nuclear programme in 2005, but it has been conducting missile and nuclear tests since the negotiations broke down in 2008. ||||| North Korea's three officials closest to its leader Kim Jong-un made a surprise visit to South Korea on Saturday, signaling an ease of tensions on the Korean Peninsula. 
 
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 The highest level visit in five years was announced by the South's government only an hour before the delegation arrived at Incheon International Airport on Kim's personal presidential, Russian-made aircraft. 
 
 Pyongyang's 11-member delegation was led by Hwang Pyong So, 66, who - with five promotions this year alone - has become the second most powerful official after Kim. He is the top political officer for the Korean People's Army, the vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission and the vice marshal of the army. 
 
 The delegation also included Choe Ryong-hae, who had been the North’s second most powerful official until Hwang replaced him, and Kim Yang-gon, a top Communist Party official who had orchestrated numerous North-South high level talks in the past. 
 
 In a closed-door lunch meeting, the delegation talked with South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae and national security director Kim Kwan-jin. Unification Ministry spokesman Lim Byeong Cheol told reporters that there were no plans for the North Koreans to meet with President Park. 
 
 Details of the lunch meeting were not made public except that the two sides agreed to more talks at the end of this month or in November. 
 
 Hwang and his entourage attended the closing ceremony of the Asian Games later in the evening. 
 
 After months of tensions, including a steady stream of insults between the divided neighbors and an unusual number of North Korean missile and rocket tests, expectations for a breakthrough weren't high, but even the visit itself was significant, allowing valuable contact between confidants of North Korea's authoritarian leader and Seoul's senior official for North Korean affairs. 
 
 One analyst called it a "golden opportunity" for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to test North Korea's willingness, at the highest levels, to improve shaky ties, but it seemed unlikely that Park would meet with the aides to North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong-un. 
 
 The visit comes amid rumors in Seoul about the health of Kim, who has made no public appearances since September 3 and recently skipped a high-profile event he usually attends. A recent official documentary showed footage from August of him limping, overweight and mentioned his "discomfort." 
 
 High-level North Korean visits to South Korea have been scarce since inter-Korean relations became strained after Park's conservative predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, took office in early 2008 with a tough line on the North. Attacks blamed on North Korea in 2010 killed 50 South Koreans. 
 
 The last such senior visit south was in 2009, when high-ranking Workers' Party official Kim Ki Nam and spy chief Kim Yang Gon, the same official who visited Saturday, came to pay their respects to the late liberal South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. The North Koreans met President Lee, conveyed a message from then leader Kim Jong Il and discussed inter-Korean cooperation. 
 
 Besides the North Korean test firings of about 100 rockets and missiles this year, both sides have leveled harsh criticism at each other, with North Korean state media calling the South Korean president a prostitute. 
 
 Word of the North's participation in the Asian Games was welcomed as a step forward. 
 
 North Korea boycotted the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Summer Olympics, both in Seoul, but attended the 2002 Asian Games in Busan, the 2003 University Games in Daegu and the 2005 Asian Athletics Championships in Incheon. Those last three came during an era of liberal governments in Seoul that were more accommodating to Pyongyang. 
 
 North Korea had said ahead of these games that it wanted to send both athletes and cheerleaders but later balked at sending cheerleaders because of what it called South Korean hostility. 
 
 The success at the Asian Games for both Koreas, which were in the top 10 for gold medals, is a source of pride for all Koreans, said one of the North Korean officials, Kim Yang Gon, a secretary in the ruling Workers' Party and senior official responsible for South Korean affairs, according to the YTN TV network. Choe Ryong Hae, another Workers' Party secretary and chairman of the State Physical Culture and Sports Guidance Commission, also attended. 
 
 The North Korean officials planned to fly back home later Saturday after the games' closing ceremonies. 
 
 The Associated Press contributed to this story. ||||| With the North Korean leader not seen in public for more than a month, rumours of a palace coup are rife. But evidence from inside the country suggests otherwise, says Christopher Green 
 
 The appearance of three senior North Koreans in South Korea at the closing ceremony of the Asian Games has caused quite a stir. One of them has links to sport and another to relations with Seoul, so both had reasons to make the trip. But it’s the presence of the third, Hwang Pyong-so, that has caused the most consternation. 
 
 Hwang is a member of the North Korea’s Organisation and Guidance Department (OGD), which wields immense power in the country, with some observers claiming it represents a rival source of authority to the young leader, Kim Jong-un. 
 
 Kim Jong-un’s absence from the victory parade in Pyongyang for athletes returning from the Games only added to the speculation. 
 
 
 
 The leader has not been seen in public since 3 September, missing high-profile events including the celebrations for founding day of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea on 9 September and a legislative session of the Supreme People’s Assembly on the 25th. Just yesterday he missed a meeting to mark the 17th anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s election as general secretary of the ruling party. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest North Korea’s Asian Games athletes welcomed back to Pyongyang. Photograph: KCNA/EPA 
 
 Formal acknowledgement in a television documentary that Kim is suffering from “discomfort” did nothing to dampen the rumours that he has been subject to a palace coup. 
 
 The speculation stems from remarks from a former high-ranking North Korean official turned defector, Jang Jin-sung, suggesting the OGD has seized control, leaving Kim as a figurehead. 
 
 
 
 For many commenters, Hwang’s surprise appearance at the closing ceremony of the Asian Games was enough to provide evidence of Kim Jong-un’s downfall – both because of Hwang’s seniority and the unlikeliness of his trip to the south. 
 
 Neither of Hwang’s two public titles, director of the Korean People’s Army general political department and vice-chair of the National Defence Commission, have anything to do with sport. His position within the OGD is not well known, but the fact that a person with these ties would appear in the heart of South Korean territory was seen as proof of a powerful shake-up at the top. 
 
 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hwang Pyong-so arrives in Incheon for the closing ceremony of the Incheon Asian Games. Photograph: YONHAP/EPA 
 
 But there is a less dramatic explanation. Based on the video evidence of his limp, it is widely accepted that Kim is now receiving medical treatment – possibly at one of the family’s well-appointed villas. The Seoul-based defector group, North Korea Intellectuals’ Solidarity, claims that Kim Yo-jong, his younger sister who acted as an aide to their father Kim Jong-il during his final years, is signing off on decisions in his absence. 
 
 Yet claims that Kim has been toppled are not supported by reports of internal North Korean lectures explaining the surprise visit to the Games. DailyNK, a South Korean media organisation staffed in part by defectors who have sources in the North, says civilians were gathered at workplaces and housing complexes on Saturday afternoon to hear the government’s explanation for the trip. 
 
 
 
 “Senior party and military cadres were dispatched all the way [to the Asian Games] for our athletes, who, without exception, honoured the Fatherland with their indomitable fighting spirit,” one lecturer explained. “With his great love and compassion, Marshal Kim Jong-un personally organised their dispatch, and provided them with a special plane,” she added. 
 
 The text for these lectures, a regular feature of life in North Korea, is produced centrally for dispatch throughout the land, and delivered without deviation. Not attending public lectures and teaching sessions is, officially at least, not an option – as mandated by the Ten Principles for the Establishment of the One-ideology System. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest North Korean athletes pay tribute to statues of former leaders on their return from the Asian Games. Photograph: KCNA/EPA 
 
 The result is that almost all North Koreans hear the same stories and lies, and remain on-message, however far they may be from the capital. In the absence of verifiable information on Kim’s status, they offer vital insight into what Pyongyang wants the country’s people to believe. 
 
 The suggestion that he is still at the helm, nominally at least, is supported by Choson Sinbo, an online publication run by the pro-North association of Korean residents in Japan, which reported that the visit to Incheon was “made possible by the resolve of Kim Jong-un”. 
 
 Also, the domestic North Korean media has barely reported on the trip at all. However, it has focused on the medal winning exploits of the country’s athletes at the Asian Games, with the official mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun singing one song loudly and clearly: the country’s sporting prowess is all down to the “energetic guidance” of one man: Kim Jong-un. 
 
 So despite the rumour mill, the North Korean message is still of Kim’s benevolent greatness. In elite circles his authority may be fragile, but that is a different question, one of the distribution of power in a dictatorship. It should not be confused with control over society. Publicly at least, the Kim dynasty remains in complete control.
– If Kim Jong Un's disappearance from the public arena in recent weeks wasn't strange enough, now factor this in: The No. 2 and No. 3 leaders of North Korea made a surprise visit today to South Korea, reports the Washington Post. Delegations from both nations held their first high-level talks in five years, and while no details were released, they agreed to another round later this month or in November, reports ABC News. Leading the North's delegation was Hwang Pyong So, who has risen this year to become the second most powerful person behind Kim. “It’s a big deal, it's really a big deal, because it’s completely unprecedented,” a North Korea scholar who teaches in Seoul tells the Post. The BBC's Stephen Evans suspects that the North's economic troubles have forced the nation to ditch its old approach of hurling insults and threats at its neighbor. As for Kim, there's still no official explanation for his absence from public events, save for a documentary that showed him limping and referred to his "discomfort." Among the theories: Maybe gout or bum ankles.