South Korea has deployed missiles capable of hitting the North Korean capital Pyongyang near the tense border on the peninsula, media reports in Seoul said Friday.

The forward deployment of the surface-to-surface missiles, known as the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), was in response to a recent rise in tensions, Yonhap news agency and Dong-A Ilbo newspaper reported.

Several ATACMS missiles, which can be fired from multiple rocket launchers, have been sited near the border Demilitarised Zone, Yonhap quoted a military source as saying.

A spokesman for the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff declined comment but said strategy could be applied flexibly. The defence ministry denied the report.

With an effective range of 165 kilometres (102 miles), the missiles can pinpoint targets with a global positioning system and inertial guidance technology, Yonhap said.

The South's army in 2004 completed the purchase of 220 ATACMS missiles from the United States.

Dong-A said the missiles were deployed both to frontline areas and the capital area to respond to any North Korean long-range missile attacks. It said the South's military expects they will act as a deterrent.

The North has for years sited artillery and missiles along the border which are capable of hitting Seoul.

Tensions have been high since the South accused its neighbour of torpedoing a warship in March 2010, killing 46 sailors.

The North denied responsibility for the sinking but last November killed four people with a bombardment of a South Korean border island.

This month its military threatened an attack in protest at the use, by some South Korean troops, of photos of Pyongyang's ruling family as rifle-range targets. The practice has been stopped but the North is demanding an apology.

earlier related report
UN official calls for North Korea aid
Sydney (AFP) June 17, 2011 - A senior United Nations official Friday called for urgent aid to North Korea, pleading with international donors to overlook political difficulties in the face of a humanitarian crisis.

Valerie Amos, head of the UN Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs, said of the estimated US$210 million needed to confront dire food shortages in the communist state, only about 15 percent had been pledged.

"In North Korea we're facing a situation where about six million people are in danger of not getting enough to eat," Baroness Amos told AFP from Canberra.

"But because of the political situation in North Korea and because many countries don't feel able to support aid to that country, it means that we are in a situation where people now... are only getting about 25 percent of the rations that we think are necessary for survival.

"We are really facing a very, very serious situation."

In Washington, the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to bar US food aid to North Korea, with lawmakers charging that the assistance would prop up the communist regime instead of feeding the hungry.

Amos, who will meet with government officials in tsunami-hit Japan after leaving Australia, urged countries to recognise the humanitarian situation in North Korea.

"Any donors who would normally support a humanitarian crisis, we are asking all of these to look at this again and see whether or not they can support us here," the British official said.

"Politically it's a very closed society, and we know of problems there in terms of governance, inclusivity and openness. But at the end of the day it is the people who are suffering who matter."

Amos said she had recently agreed to commit an additional US$7.2 million dollars from the UN's central emergency response fund to North Korea.

"But I mean it is a drop in the ocean compared to what is required," she said.

Impoverished North Korea has requested overseas aid, with US relief groups that visited the country earlier this year saying people were again eating grass and tree bark.

Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans died in a famine in the 1990s.

But some South Korean officials are sceptical about the country's current needs, saying North Korea wants to stockpile supplies for handouts to mark the 100th birth anniversary of its founder Kim Il-Sung next year.