SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea will ship $25 million in construction materials and equipment to help North Korea rebuild cross-border rail and road links that were severed more than 50 years ago.

Reconnecting transportation links is part of an agreement the two Koreas reached in August. The construction shipment is part of the deal.

Kim Jong-ro, a spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry, said the first shipment will arrive in North Korea by Friday. The amount and type of equipment to be sent were settled in three days of talks that ended Sunday.

The agreement requires South Korea to provide a total of 34 excavators, 27 bulldozers, 210 trucks, 20,080 tons of cement, 9,148 tons of steel bars, 2,000 tons of diesel and 1,000 tons of gasoline.

The militaries of the two Koreas have cleared mines from parts of their heavily fortified border since mid-September for the rail and road projects. If work proceeds smoothly, a cross-border road will be reconnected as early as November. A rail link will follow by the end of the year.

The project is one of the most visible symbols of a thaw between the two Koreas after decades of tension. The Koreas, divided in 1945, never signed a peace treaty after the 1950-53 Korean War.