Kim Jong-Un, the North Korean leader

New Delhi, April 14: India plans to deliver wheat and possibly other grains to North Korea following a rare meeting yesterday between foreign minister Sushma Swaraj and her Pyongyang counterpart Ri Su Yong at a time New Delhi is wooing South Korea.

Ri left Delhi today after the first ever visit by a North Korean foreign minister to India. It was a trip that senior officials told The Telegraph yielded little in itself but pointed to the Narendra Modi government's plans to expand India's role in the Asia-Pacific region, including the Korean peninsula.

Modi, who visited Australia and Japan last year, will be travelling to China and South Korea in May before he completes his first year as Prime Minister. Defence minister Manohar Parrikar is also expected to visit Seoul later this month.

The contours of the Indian aid to North Korea are yet to be finalised, officials said. Ri has invited Sushma to Pyongyang but officials said there were no plans now for any visit.

"Over the past few decades, we've really played no more than a bit part in this area," an official said. "That is changing, but for us to be a truly important Asia-Pacific player, we must also involve ourselves more in the Korean peninsula."

Officially, Seoul and Pyongyang are not at peace - they only signed an armistice in 1953 ending three years of fighting.

North Korea, armed with nuclear-tipped missiles, has long worried analysts and diplomats in several countries with its threats to inject further tension into the region, especially as its sole long-time ally, China, has in recent years hinted at growing frustration with Pyongyang.

Although Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had played mediator between the Americans and the Chinese during the Korean crisis in the 1950s - in the first major test of his ideas of "non-alignment" - India has since pulled back from active diplomacy over the Korean peninsula.

India and North Korea have had embassies in each other's countries since 1973 but New Delhi has since drawn significantly closer to Seoul than to Pyongyang, motivated by South Korea's investments as well as North Korea's missile technology transfer to Pakistan.

Over the past few years, India's diplomatic engagement with North Korea has reduced largely to a formality.

Although India had in 2011 agreed to send emergency food supplies following crop failure in North Korea, and participated in an industrial fair in Pyongyang, the foreign office by 2012 was staring at an unlikely crisis.

No Indian Foreign Service officer with even just a decade of experience - neither those directly recruited nor those promoted from other government services - was willing to take over as ambassador in Pyongyang.

Eventually, the foreign office sent veteran stenographer Ajay Kumar Sharma - whose only prior diplomatic experience amounted to filling in as a counsellor in Suva, Fiji - to Pyongyang as ambassador.

Three years on, Sharma has earned his appointment with something none of his predecessors could boast - a high-level diplomatic visit.