North Korea says it will lift restrictions on cross-border passage with South Korea starting Friday.

In a telephone message to Seoul on Thursday, the North said it would remove all the restrictions on South Korean personnel and vehicles at the border that were put into place in December.

With the decision, South Koreans will be allowed to cross the border into the North at 19 different times a day as had been the case before December first when the North imposed restrictions and limited the number of crossings to only six specific times a day.

North Korea unilaterally imposed the border travel restrictions in protest of what they called Seoul's anti-North Korean policies.

The North’s decision would also allow three-thousand South Korean personnel to stay in the North compared to the limit of 880 previously imposed.

The North also notified the South that it would normalize the operations of an inter-Korean economic cooperation office that was closed in December last year.

The Unification Ministry in Seoul said it would take about a week for border crossings and cargo train operations on the Gyeongui Railway to be fully normalized as technical preparations are required.