The Unification Ministry said Wednesday it will actively support a move by the widow of former President Kim Dae-jung to visit North Korea as it could help ease tension on the divided peninsula.
  

Lee Hee-ho, who was the South's first lady during Kim's five-year tenure until 2003, is seeking to visit the communist nation as early as this month for humanitarian purposes.
  

Aides to the late president visited the North on Tuesday for discussion on Lee's proposed trip but returned home without finalizing a specific date. A similar visit is expected to be made soon for talks on the itinerary.
  

The ministry said in a report to the National Assembly that it plans to closely cooperate with the Kim Dae-jung Peace Center to make Lee's envisioned visit a success.
  

"The government plans to provide necessary support for the visit," the report showed.
  

North Korea has intensified its verbal attacks against South Korea following the United Nations' establishment of a field office tasked with monitoring the North's dismal human rights situation. Pyongyang has said Seoul will face catastrophic fallout in inter-Korean ties due to the office opening.
  

Touching on inter-Korean cooperation, the ministry said it plans to propose a pilot run of a train that would travel along railways that link the two Koreas if talks between the two sides are resumed.
  

Seoul plans to restore the section of a disconnected inter-Korean railroad on its soil by 2017. The move is part of its ambitious goal to re-connect the Gyeongwon Line that once ran from central Seoul to the North Korean eastern city of Wonsan before the Korean Peninsula was divided 70 years ago.
  

South Korea hopes to eventually link its rail network to Russia's Trans-Siberian Railway via North Korea under President Park Geun-hye's Eurasia initiative that calls for logistics development among Eurasian nations by linking their railroads. (Yonhap)