(Adds FAO statement) SEOUL, March 15 (Reuters) - North Korea has an outbreak of highly infectious foot-and-mouth disease and asked the South to provide it with medication, South Korea's unification minister said on Thursday. North Korea said it had culled 466 cows and 2,630 pigs since an outbreak of the disease on Jan. 10 at a farm near its capital, Pyongyang, minister Lee Jae-joung told reporters. "We will try to help as soon as possible because there is a concern that it will spread to our region," Lee told a weekly briefing. Last week, the Paris-based Office International des Epizooties, the world body that governs animal health, said on its Web site (www.oie.int) the North had had a foot-and-mouth outbreak. It reported the same numbers of animals culled. Foot-and-mouth is highly contagious for cloven-hoofed animals such as pigs and cows but harmless to humans. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the OIE would send three experts to investigate the situation, the first outbreak since 1960, the FAO said in a statement, after it was asked by Pyongyang for help. The experts are due to arrive on Saturday. "The mission would stay there for a week to provide recommendations on the response to control the disease," the FAO's regional office in Bangkok said. South Korea's government has already stepped up its efforts to counter a potential outbreak of the disease, monitoring imported goods and passengers from North Korea, the Agriculture Ministry said. Pyongyang is about 130 km (80 miles) from the South Korean border. South Korea suffered foot-and-mouth outbreaks in 2000 and 2002, leading to the slaughter of 162,000 animals.
