South Korea may send fertilizer aid to North Korea to help boost its agriculture and forestry sectors, the unification minister said Tuesday, signaling Seoul could ease its years-long sanctions on Pyongyang.
   
South Korea has virtually banned rice and fertilizer aid to North Korea since 2010, when it slapped the sanctions following the North's deadly torpedoing of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan in March that year. All inter-Korean exchanges, excluding some humanitarian aid programs and a joint industrial complex, have been halted.
   
"If only transparency were guaranteed, (the government) could consider various assistance measures including small-scale fertilizer aid to North Korea agriculture and forestry support projects," Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said in a keynote speech to a local forum on inter-Korean cooperation.
  
He said inter-Korean cooperation may seem impossible amid high tensions between the Koreas, but there is a need to make efforts to ease up the situation.
   
"For the moment, inter-Korean cooperation in infrastructure, agricultural and livestock sectors may appear difficult because of the inter-Korean tensions, but the government will make utmost efforts to take the first step toward (rapprochement)," said Seoul's pointman on North Korea.
   
Echoing President Park Geun-hye's so-called Dresden policy vision on North Korea, the unification minister stressed the importance of inter-Korean trust building.
   
In the policy vision announced in the German city in March, Park proposed humanitarian projects and other collaboration programs between the countries, mainly in the agriculture, forestry and cultural sectors. 
   
The government and the private sector's previous push for various inter-Korean collaboration projects have fizzled out due mainly to the North's frequent failures to live up to promises, Ryoo said.
  

"The South and the North should break down the obstacle of distrust and confrontation by (building) confidence between them,"
he noted. 
   
Joint inter-Korean programs in the agriculture and livestock segments, if they are successfully established, may serve as the basis for future inter-Korean cooperation, Ryoo added.
   
The 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically in a state of war. (Yonhap)