Unification Minister Chung Dong-young says he supports lifting a government ban on certain pro-North Korean Internet websites.

Chung said in an interview with MBC radio on Tuesday that the National Security Council had already decided to eventually lift the current ban on pro-North Korean websites deemed relatively harmless after holding further deliberations on the matter.

As for the North Korean defection issue, Chung said the government is opposed to attempts by South Korean human rights NGOs to organize efforts to help North Koreans come to the capitalist South.

Chung also said there would be no more large-scale defections of North Koreans to the South, an apparent reference to Seoul's airlifting of more than four hundred North Korean escapees from Vietnam last year.

The airlift operation, the single largest mass defection of Northerners to South Korea, plunged the status of inter-Korean relations to new lows, leading Pyongyang to shut down dialogue and exchange with the South.

The top unification policymaker also claimed that Seoul has already abandoned Cold War-type policies originally formulated to address the long-running battle for political and ideological supremacy between the two Koreas.