Inter-Korean talks could possibly resume as early as mid-April, South Korea's unification minister said Friday, hinting at the possibility of holding the first government-level talks with North Korea in almost year.

"I have an idea that it should be at least mid-April for the South-North talks to resume," lawmakers quoted Unification Minister Yu Woo-ik as saying in a dinner meeting with a group of lawmakers who visited an joint industrial complex in the border city of Kaesong earlier in the day.

Eight lawmakers paid a rare one-day trip to the Kaesong industrial zone as part of efforts to revitalize the joint economic project.

Yu thinks the North is postponing a decision to restart inter-Korean talks because of the lingering instability of new leader Kim Jon-un's inherited rule, said one lawmaker who attended the dinner meeting with the minister.

Yu's suggestion of mid-April as a possible time for talks to resume seems linked to South Korea's April 11 general elections and the April 15 memorial event for the centenary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, the North's founding father.

No governmental talks between the two Koreas have been held since a military-level meeting in February of last year to discuss the March 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship and a November 2010 artillery attack on a South Korean border island.

Seoul on Wednesday proposed holding working-level talks with the North later this month on joint pest control near ancient tombs in the North in an apparent bid to help ease lingering tension on the divided Korean Peninsula.

Pyongyang, however, indicated it would reject that offer, citing the South's hawkish North Korean policy. (Yonhap News)