Pyongyang sent a message to Seoul through a cross-border Red Cross channel, calling for the return of 27 people through the sea border, the South`s unification ministry said.
"Our side agreed to return them," a ministry spokeswoman told AFP, adding Seoul, citing bad weather, offered to repatriate them through the truce village of Panmunjom on Wednesday.
"There has been no reply yet from North Korea to our counter-proposal," she said.
It was not known immediately whether the North had retracted its earlier demand for the unconditional return of the four others, who had expressed a wish to stay in the South.
The fishing boat carrying 31 North Koreans drifted across the disputed Yellow Sea border in thick fog on February 5.
The isolated communist state refuses to accept that two men and two women want to defect, and says the South put pressure on group members to stay to try to fuel cross-border tensions.
The North has demanded that Seoul bring the four to a meeting with their families in Panmunjom so they can confirm in person that they want to stay in the South.
Seoul said it has no intention of producing the defectors, saying their free choice to stay has been "confirmed by objective and fair measures".
Cross-border relations have been icy since the South accused the North of torpedoing a warship in March 2010 with the loss of 46 lives. Pyongyang denies the charge.
Tensions flared further after Pyongyang shelled a border island in November in its first attack on a civilian area since the Korean War, killing four South Koreans.
(Uu.G003/H-RN)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
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