South Korea on Thursday granted approval to a private organization to send coronavirus-related aid to the North, the first such permission since the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus early this year.

The news comes two months after concerns over the spread of the virus led to the temporary closure of the Inter-Korean Liaison office Kaesong in January, as part of a broader closure of the DPRK’s borders that month.

Approval for sending the aid was granted on Tuesday, an official from South Korea’s Ministry of Unification (MOU) told reporters on Thursday.

The private organization — which has not been named — will send “hand sanitizers” worth around 100 million KRW ($80,887) to the North.

Private organizations in South Korea require government approval to send aid to the DPRK, and must present detailed procurement and transportation plans, sign an agreement with North Korean interlocutors, and ensure the goods will be distributed in a transparent fashion, before securing it.

Those requirements have now been met, the MOU official said Thursday, with the organization reportedly financing the items on its own.

“They wish to keep the name of the organization, the route, and timing of transfer [of items] not open to public… to pursue the project smoothly,” the unification ministry official told reporters.

Meanwhile, the MOU also confirmed on Thursday that South Korea has committed to spend around $5.73 million on aid to North Korea this year.

The funds represent more than 60 percent of total worldwide funding for aid to North Korea this year, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) website on Thursday.

Seoul has committed to donate $4 million to a maternal and child health project run by the World Health Organization (WHO), with the rest going towards supporting the DPRK Red Cross Society’s work in repairing damage caused by last year’s Typhoon Lingling.

South Korea has also contributed $3 million to support the WHO’s coronavirus-related work, aimed at helping several countries, including North Korea, mitigate the worst effects of COVID-19.

While Thursday’s news represents the first government approval of private South Korean aid to help North Korea prevent and manage a potential outbreak of COVID-19, Seoul is yet to report any government-level inter-Korean cooperation on the issue so far.

Speaking to reporters at a press conference last week, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun confirmed that “no cooperation has happened” so far and that Seoul has “not received any requests [regarding joint quarantine efforts]” from Pyongyang.

“If ever such need arises, [we] will positively review it,” he stressed.

And while North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in early March sent South Korean President Moon Jae-in a letter of “condolences” to those fighting the COVID-19 outbreak in the South, Seoul at the time said that the note contained no proposals for cooperation on public health issues.

While North Korea has in recent months made combating a potential outbreak of COVID-19 a top priority, the country’s has also continued an emphasis on military development promised by Kim Jong Un at a ruling party plenum last December.

In likely response to Pyongyang’s continued testing of short-range ballistic missiles, top U.S. and South Korea nuclear envoys on Thursday morning reportedly held a phone call to discuss continued cooperation on the issue.

According to a readout from South Korea’s foreign ministry, Stephen Biegun and Lee Do-hoon affirmed the need for “close ROK-U.S. cooperation regarding North Korea and its nuclear weapons problem amid making active effort to contain the spread of COVID-19.”

Edited by Oliver Hotham