North Korea's propaganda outlets stepped up their demand Wednesday for South Korea to lift sanctions imposed on Pyongyang for its 2010 deadly torpedo attack against a South Korean warship, calling them an "obstacle" to advancing inter-Korean relations.

"It is important to get rid of legal and institutional devices that stand in the way for improvement in inter-Korean relations," Uriminzokkiri, the North's external propaganda website, said. "It is so when we talk about the May 24 steps."

It claimed that the sanctions were based on a "fabrication aimed at escalating confrontations and a crisis of war by blocking exchanges and cooperation altogether."

The May 24 steps refer to the punitive measures announced by the conservative Lee Myung-bak government in May 2010 in the wake of the North's deadly torpedo attack on a warship that killed 46 sailors on board.

Under the measures, almost all cross-border contacts and exchanges came to a halt but observers say the sanctions have been rendered invalid given that there are already multi-layered global sanctions and that Seoul has taken a "flexible" approach in enforcing them.