Fuel aid is one of the commitments South Korea assumed in February at talks with North Korea, the United States, Russia, Japan and China, as part of economic incentives to persuade the North to scrap its controversial nuclear program.
"The ship, carrying 22,600 tons of heavy fuel oil, will leave the southeastern port of Ulsan for North Korea's Sonbong at 1 a.m. [local time] on July 29," Yonhap news agency quoted Kim Nam-sik, spokesman for the Unification Ministry, as saying.
The loading work was carried out swiftly, so the departure date was brought forward by three days, the spokesman said.
Pyongyang has begun receiving 50,000 metric tons of fuel oil from its wealthier southern neighbor for its thermal power plants as an incentive for the shutdown of its nuclear facility at Yongbyon, and is to eventually receive a total of 950,000 metric tons from China, Russia and the U.S.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, confirmed last week that North Korea had closed all the facilities at Yongbyon, which were used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
The move has essentially finalized the first phase of the disarmament deal agreed in Beijing on February 13, when Pyongyang was promised economic and diplomatic incentives in exchange for disabling its nuclear facilities.
The second phase will include North Korea providing information on all its nuclear programs, including its uranium enrichment, and shutting down all remaining nuclear facilities.
North Korea now expects Washington to strike it off the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, and to drop its "hostile" policies toward Pyongyang, and for Japan to improve ties with the regime, which it accuses of kidnapping its nationals in the 1970s-1980s.
The reclusive state also wants more assurances that South Korea will not develop nuclear weapons.
Sources at six-nation talks that ended last week said North Korea had sufficient infrastructure capacity to receive about 50,000 tons of fuel oil per month, and that it would take up to 19 months to complete the deliveries, although part of the fuel supplies could be substituted for other forms of humanitarian aid, including food supplies.
Delays in the implementation of the February commitments were caused by a dispute with Washington over North Korea's frozen $25 million in a Macao bank, which finally reached Pyongyang in late June.
Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2002, expelled IAEA inspectors, and last October conducted its first nuclear bomb test.
