South Korea has approved a request by a South Korean son to visit his mother's grave in North Korea in the Moon Jae-in administration's first permission for its nationals going on a North Korean trip upon an invitation from the North, the Unification Ministry said Monday.

The ministry has accepted the request by the man surnamed Choi, a son of Ryu Mi-yong, late chairwoman of the central committee of the Chondoist Chongu Party, a North Korean minor political party.

She died of lung cancer in November 2016. Ryu and her husband, Choe Tok-sin, who served as a foreign minister in South Korea during the 1960s, emigrated to the United States before defecting to the North in 1986.