Inter-Korean trade has recovered to levels prior to sanctions implemented against the North in May 2010.
 
The Korea Customs Service said Thursday that inter-Korean trade totaled one-point-53 billion dollars between January and July, almost equal to the one-point-56 billion dollars registered during the same period in 2009.
 
South Korea imposed the so-called May 24 sanctions following the North's torpedo attack on the naval corvette Cheonan in March 2010.
 
Following the sanctions, inter-Korean trade fell to around one-point-one to one-point-two billion dollars during the January to July period. In 2013, when the Gaeseong Industrial Complex was shut down for about four months, it dropped as low as 600 million dollars.
 
The Ministry of Unification said most of the trade between the two Koreas is raw materials and products that go through the Gaeseong industrial park and that the amount of trade increased partly due to a rise in prices.