South Korea is willing to send off a group of emergency rescue workers to northeastern Japan, hit hard by a magnitude-8.9 earthquake earlier in the day, the foreign ministry here said Friday.

"The government expresses deep condolences to the government and the people of Japan,"a ministry spokesman told reporters at a press briefing. "We hope damages will be soon repaired, and we plan to cooperate with Japan as much as possible,"the spokesman said, adding that the country is ready to dispatch a team of rescuers to the neighboring country.

No South Korean casualties have been reported, the spokesman said.

The South Korean embassy and the consulate in Japan has set up an emergency task force to assess damage there, advising South Korean nationals not to access the seashore and rivers put under a tsunami warning.

Some 910,000 South Koreans are in Japan, with 10,000 of them near the city of Sendai in northern Japan, according to the ministry.