South Korea Offers Food Aid to North
Share with others:
SEOUL -- South Korea on Monday offered to ship 10,000 tons of corn to North Korea in what would be the first government-funded humanitarian aid for the North in nearly two years.
The offer is far smaller than what South Korea used to ship almost annually to the North. When President Lee Myung-bak took office in early last year, he conditioned any large-scale aid shipments on progress made in talks about ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Typically, the South would ship as much as 500,000 tons of rice and 300,000 tons of chemical fertilizer to North Korea each year.
Mr. Lee's policy upset North Korea, and inter-Korean relations chilled rapidly. Earlier this year, North Korea test-fired missiles and detonated a nuclear device. But in recent months, it has begun reaching out for talks with the United States and South Korea.
Mr. Lee's small offer of aid indicated that South Korea was seeking a way to respond to the North's recent conciliatory gestures without repeating what Mr. Lee had called a key mistake of his liberal predecessors: coddling the North Korean regime with large aid.
There was no immediate response from North Korea regarding the food offer. The North has faced chronic food shortages and depended on outside aid to help feed its 24 million people since bad weather and mismanagement destroyed its economy in the mid-1990s. It typically is short of 600,000 to 1 million tons of food a year.
"It's difficult to say 10,000 tons are enough considering the North's food shortages, but North Korea did not specify the size or items when it asked for humanitarian assistance," said Chun Hae-sung, a spokesman of the Unification Ministry in Seoul. "Regarding additional assistance, there is nothing we're considering."
North Korea asked for food aid during recent Red Cross talks with South Korea in return for allowing temporary reunions of Koreans separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.
In a message to the North on Monday, the South Korean Red Cross Society said that it was willing to provide the corn, as well as 20 tons of powdered milk and medical supplies. The package will cost 4.1 billion won, or $3.5 million, officials said.
Until Mr. Lee took office, South Korea had been one of the biggest donors to the North. But conservative South Koreans who helped elect him fear that large unconditional aid would only weaken the impact of United Nations sanctions placed on the North for testing a nuclear device and would embolden the recalcitrant North Korean regime in nuclear disarmament talks.
This week, a senior North Korean nuclear envoy is travelling in the United States for talks that Washington hopes will lead to the revival of dormant six-nation talks on ending the North's nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid and diplomatic recognition.
First Published October 26, 2009 10:35 am
