Seoul has sent a notice to North Korea offering to repatriate the remains of a woman presumed to have floated to the South via a river that crosses the inter-Korean border, the unification ministry said Friday.

Pyongyang has not yet responded to the offer to return the body, which was discovered with a North Korean badge earlier this year, it added.

“The Ministry of Unification tried to deliver a notice in the name of the president of the Korean Red Cross to North Korea through the North-South Joint Liaison Office at 9 a.m., stating that it would deliver the body and personal belongings of the deceased to the North on Nov. 17,” the spokesperson said.

“If North Korea announces its intention to accept the remains, the Ministry of Unification plans to hand over the body and possessions of the presumed North Korean to the DPRK through Panmunjom.”

A South Korean passerby discovered the body in July near South Korea’s Gunnam Dam in Gyeonggi Province, just 10 miles (16 km) downstream from the inter-Korean border. Authorities said the woman was wearing a badge featuring the portraits of former North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, leading them to suspect she was a North Korean citizen.

The ministry said further investigations yielded no evidence suggesting the woman was not from the North. 

Pyongyang has typically responded to past South Korean offers to repatriate bodies of presumed DPRK citizens within six days, the ministry spokesperson said, and since 2010 there have been three other cases where North Korea did not respond. South Korea will cremate the remains if the North does not accept them.

In July, authorities also discovered the remains of three minors — one of whom was only an infant — in waters along the inter-Korean border. Investigators have not yet determined whether the bodies originated from North Korea, amid suspicions that they were caught up in seasonal floods. 

Edited by Bryan Betts