The government is mulling aid to North Korea to help curb the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease near Pyongyang.

Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung told reporters that the North has taken an emergency step to vaccinate one-hundred-thousand pigs and cows within a 70-kilometer radius of Sangwon County where the first case was reported.

Lee added that the North Korean government requested quarantine equipment including fumigation machines and disinfectors.

The minister said that Seoul decided to help to prevent highly contagious livestock viruses in the North from spreading to domestic farms.

Since the disease was first reported in a calf on a North Korean farm in January, the North has culled some four-hundred-60 infected cows and over 26-hundred pigs.