South Korea to start broadcasts with North

SEOUL: The South Korean ministry handling relations with North Korea said Sunday it would start producing Internet television and radio broadcasts to try to raise public interest in unification.

The unification ministry said an Internet broadcasting channel would begin operating around September 26.

The ministry will produce video content, weekly news reports and other material which will be aired.

An Internet radio channel will begin broadcasting news on unification and interviews with North Korean refugees from September 26

The South's President Lee Myung-Bak has stressed the need to prepare for reunification of the peninsula, which has been formally divided since 1948, and has proposed a tax in the South to prepare for such an event.

In June, Lee said unification "won't take such a long time" but did not elaborate.

North Korea says the capitalist South is plotting "unification through absorption" in an attempt to destroy its socialist system.

According to a recent statement on Pyongyang's official news agency, relations have become so confrontational they are on "the brink of war" because of the Seoul government's policy of "unification through absorption".

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011