The top South Korean men’s professional basketball league said Wednesday it hopes to set up an inter-Korean basketball tournament this summer.

The Korean Basketball League said it has received permission from the Ministry of Unification, which handles inter-Korean affairs, to contact North Korean basketball officials about organizing an All-Korean event. KBL officials said the tournament, if materialized, will take place in August at a yet-to-be-determined venue in South Korea.

The officials added they will be in touch with the International Basketball Federation, the international basketball governing body, and the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, among other relevant bodies, to set up meetings with their North Korean counterparts.

The North Korean governing body of basketball is called the Amateur Basketball Association of DPRK, using the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Led by president Paek Nam-sun, the association is one of 213 FIBA member federations.

According to the FIBA’s website, the North Korean body became a FIBA member in 1947.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is known to be a huge fan of NBA basketball. In March, he attended a game in Pyongyang between a North Korean university and the Harlem Globetrotters, a touring exhibition hoops team from the United States, with former NBA All-Star Dennis Rodman.

The KBL’s attempt to invite North Korean players comes at a time of heightened tension on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea conducted a nuclear test in February and after the international community moved to impose fresh sanctions on it in the aftermath, the communist state in protest launched multiple missiles and pulled its workers from the inter-Korean Kaesong industrial zone.

Pyongyang has also rejected Seoul’s proposals for dialogue over the Kaesong situation.

An official with the KBL said he hoped the inter-Korean basketball tournament would change the mood for the better.

“We’re trying to invite a North Korean team here to help reduce tension on the Korean Peninsula and to encourage inter-Korean exchange on a civilian level,” the official said. “In the past, when Koreans fielded unified teams in table tennis and football, that helped create a more amicable atmosphere on the peninsula.”

In 1999, a South Korean men’s and women’s team each traveled to Pyongyang to commemorate the groundbreaking for Chung Ju-yung Gymnasium, named after a late South Korean business mogul who initiated a series of inter-Korean economic projects.

Four years later, a South Korean team went back to Pyongyang to celebrate the opening of the arena.

The two Koreas competed as a single nation at the 1991 World Table Tennis Championships and also at the 1991 FIFA World Youth Championship. But they have never fielded unified teams for individual events at the Olympics or the Asian Games.

The Koreas have marched in together at opening ceremonies for the Olympics and the Asian Games since the turn of the millennium, but not since the 2007 Asian Winter Games in Changchun, China.

The Koreas remain technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. (Yonhap News)