MOSCOW, September 1 (RIA Novosti) - Border traffic between North and South Korea resumed on Tuesday, following months of heavy restrictions imposed by the North.

The lifting of restrictions on cross-border cargo transit will provide a boost to the country's main joint economic project, the Kaesong industrial park to the north of the border.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo as saying traffic has been "normalized to the level prior to December 1st last year" and that "entry by South Koreans to the North is smoothly underway."

Work at the Kaesong industrial park, which employs thousands of North Koreans and provides much-needed revenue to Pyongyang, had been under severe threat due to the restrictions, imposed over what the North viewed as South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's hostile policies.

The full resumption of border traffic is the latest in a series of conciliatory gestures from the North in recent weeks.

Delegations from the North and South agreed at talks in late August to hold reunions of families separated by the Korean War more than half a century ago, soon after a North Korean delegation visited Seoul for the funeral of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, remembered for his work to repair inter-Korean ties. North Korea also recently released a South Korean worker at Kaesong, and fishermen convicted of illegally crossing the sea border.