SEOUL, Sept 3 (Reuters) - The highest-ranking North Korean granted asylum in South Korea has been given permission to travel abroad and plans to visit the United States, an official at the foundation chaired by the defector said on Wednesday.

Hwang Jang-yop, 85, a close confidant to North Korean state founder Kim Il-sung and a mentor to his son and current leader Kim Jong-il, defected to South Korea in 1997 in a major coup for Seoul. He became a fierce critic of Pyongyang.

Hwang's supporters said previous South Korean presidents tried to prevent him from freely travelling overseas, fearing the trips would anger the North and hurt their plans to draw the South closer to its prickly neighbour.

But ties have grown chilly since President Lee Myung-bak took office in February and angered North Korea by saying he would cut what once had been a free flow of aid and tie future handouts to progress the North makes in nuclear disarmament.

"Hwang plans to visit the U.S. at the end of this year or early next year and to stay for a month or so, giving lectures," said Do Myung-hak, a senior official at the Committee for the Democratisation of North Korea.

A North Korean who defected with Hwang in 1997 had filed a court suit seeking a South Korean passport, arguing his human rights were being denied because he could not freely leave the country, local media reported.

In January, a court ruled in that defector's favour, which helped Hwang in obtaining a passport, they said.

Hwang has been under close guard since his arrival in South Korea, with the government fearing he might be assassinated by North Korean agents.

Hwang is credited with creating one of North Korea's guiding principles of "juche" or self-reliance.

In his one authorised trip abroad since arriving in South Korea, Hwang told U.S. lawmakers in 2003 that Pyongyang's isolated communist government was "profoundly unstable" and could not be trusted to adhere to a new nuclear weapons deal. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Kim Junghyun; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner and David Fogarty)

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