A British businessman who has announced plans for a 50-million-dollar fund to invest in North Korea said Wednesday he does not view the communist state's planned rocket launch as a complicating factor.

The ChosunFund was opened Tuesday, the day the North announced it would launch a research satellite into orbit -- a move widely seen in Seoul and Washington as a pretext to test its long-range Taepodong-2 missile.

The US and South Korea say any rocket launch would breach UN resolutions passed after a 2006 missile test and Seoul says it could attract further UN sanctions.

The fund will focus on reviving the North's potentially rich mining industry and on the energy sector. It was launched by KoryoAsia, a firm chaired by Colin McAskill which has been involved with the North since 2000.

McAskill said he did not view the planned satellite launch, or the North's nuclear programme, as a complication.

"To assist in developing the economy is the quickest and surest way to settle the nuclear issue," he told AFP by phone from London.

"It's time to move on the economy now. If we can assist them, it would stabilise the regime and get them to stand on their own feet."

In an earlier statement and email, McAskill cautioned that ChosunFund has "perhaps more risk attached to it than most funds" and is targeted at professionals who know the market and the risks.

He said it would be managed by Singapore-based AngloAsia Capital Management, which is wholly owned by KoryoAsia.

North Korea "has effectively been cut off from the international business community for decades. The country holds huge natural resources but is capital-starved and lacks the technology and management skills with which to develop them," McAskill said in the statement.

The (South) Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in a 2007 report, estimated the potential value of uranium, iron ore, magnesium and other minerals in the North at 2,287 trillion won (1.52 trillion dollars).

McAskill said his firm had a long track record and network of contacts in the North, which he termed "Northeast Asia's last 'frontier' emerging economy".

North Korea's economy contracted for nine years in succession in the 1990s after the break-up of the Soviet Union and the loss of crucial aid.

From 1999 onwards it managed seven years of growth. But gross domestic product shrank an estimated 1.1 percent in 2006 and 2.3 percent in 2007, according to Seoul's central bank.

In addition to the state-directed system, outdated facilities, a crippling energy shortage and the prolonged nuclear standoff with the West have complicated efforts for an economic revival.

Washington last October removed the North from a terrorism blacklist but it is still subject to a variety of US sanctions.