China seems to have promised North Korea to restore oil, food and coke supplies to the level before the North's second nuclear test to buy leader Kim Jong-il's conditional promise to return to six-party nuclear talks, a South Korean government source said Tuesday.

An intelligence officer said China sends aid worth US$190 million to the North every year. Coke is used as fuel and a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. North Korea depends on China for most of its supply.

A Unification Ministry official said, "Since a year or two ago, North Korea has been claiming that it has developed a method to produce steel without coke. This paradoxically just means that it is short of coke."

China provides the North with 200,000 tons of food aid annually. A senior government official said, "China isn't giving the North the entire aid free of charge but sells it part of the materials at one-seventh or one-ninth of international prices." He added it seems China increased the export quota for food for North Korea.

The gratuitous aid worth $21 million which China has made public recently is equivalent to the value of 70,000 tons of corn or 30,000 to 40,000 tons of rice at current international prices.

China also supplies more than 90 percent of North Korea's oil demand. In July 2003, China forced North Korea to return to the six-party nuclear talks by cutting back drastically on oil supply for a few days. "China has never completely shut off the oil pipeline, which lies beneath the Apnok (or Yalu) River, because oil would solidify and the pipeline become unusable if it is shut off completely," the official said. "So it seems that China just reduces supply using the pipeline valve."

A security officer said, "No matter how much it dislikes the North Korean leadership, China won't let the North Korean people starve to death en masse."