More than a dozen South Korean lawmakers traveled to North Korea on Monday to inspect an ancient palace site, where an inter-Korean excavation project is under way, an official here said.
  
The bipartisan group of 16 members of the National Assembly's foreign affairs and unification committee made the one-day tour of the site of Manwoldae, a Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392) palace in Kaesong, just north of the border.
  
"Ruling and opposition lawmakers shared the understanding on the need for the national Assembly to actively seek ways to support the excavation project until it finishes," the panel said in a statement.
 
South and North Korean experts have been working together to excavate the site registered as a world cultural heritage in 2013.
  
It marks the first visit by South Korean lawmakers to the North following a 2013 trip to the joint industrial complex in Kaesong as part of an annual parliamentary audit session.
  
The lawmakers also visited a museum in Kaesong, where around 100 artifacts uncovered from the site are on display.
  
The Manwoldae project began in 2007, but suffered setbacks in 2011 amid military tensions between the two Koreas.
  
South Korea is endeavoring to promote civilian inter-Korean exchanges, with this year marking the 70th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule. (Yonhap)