SEOUL: North Korea's trade with its major ally China leapt 32 percent last year to $3.47 billion, as economic ties deepened amid icy relations between the isolated North and South Korea, a Seoul trade body said Wednesday.
However the two Koreas exchanged $1.91 billion worth of goods last year, up 14 percent from 2009, the Korea International Trade Association (KITA) said.
"Trade between North Korea and China has been expanding continuously while inter-Korean relations remain tense," said KITA official Shim Nam seop.
"Unless tensions are reduced on the Korean peninsula, the gap between the amount of South-North trade and that of North China trade will widen further," he said in a statement.
Trade between the two Koreas almost equalled that between the North and China in 2007, amounting to 91 percent of the total trade between the communist state and its giant ally.
With Inter-Korean relations comparatively warm, the then-South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il held the second summit of the two Koreas that year.
But the trade ratio has since dropped to 65 percent in 2008, 64 percent in 2009 and 55 percent last year, KITA said.
Relations on the Korean peninsula became tense after the conservative government of President Lee Myung-Bak came to power in early 2008 and took a tougher stance towards Pyongyang.
Seoul suspended almost all trade relations with its neighbour after the North allegedly sank a South Korean warship near the disputed sea border in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 sailors, in March 2010. Pyongyang denies involvement.
Tensions rose further when the North shelled a frontline South Korean island in November, killing four people, including two civilians, in retaliation against gunfire exercises by the South near the disputed sea border.
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