North Korea has yet to respond to South Korea's offer to repatriate eight fishermen who were rescued earlier this week while drifting in waters off the South's east coast, Seoul officials said Friday.

The Ministry of Unification has notified North Korea of its plan to send them back next week through a loudspeaker at the truce village of Panmunjom. The salvaged sailors all expressed their desire to go home.

"There has been no response from North Korea," Jeong Joon-hee, ministry spokesman, told a regular press briefing. "But as mentioned in the notice, we are planning to repatriate them at sea on Monday morning."

The spokesman added that if a North Korean ship does not appear, the government plans to come up with other ways to repatriate them, including the use of a land route.

South Korea usually sends back North Korean sailors across the de facto inter-Korean maritime border, known as the Northern Limit Line, when they want to return.

The ministry said that the fishermen were drifting on three vessels for more than two months after presumably colliding with Chinese vessels in the East Sea.

Seoul is using loudspeakers to contact North Korea as Pyongyang cut off the two main communication channels with South Korea in response to Seoul's decision to shut down the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex in February. (Yonhap)