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Gov't denies rice aid to be sent to N. Korea via int'l body
By Shim Sun-ah
SEOUL, May 13 (Yonhap) --- The South Korean government is not considering sending rice aid to North Korea via an international organization, a senior official of the Unification Ministry said Tuesday.
The denial followed media reports that the government may soon provide humanitarian rice aid to North Korea indirectly via the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) or the United States, as the stalled six-party process on North Korea's nuclear disarmament picked up speed and the country's food shortages worsened.
Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan stated in an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper Monday that South Korea is consulting with the U.S. and an international organization to aggressively provide humanitarian aid to the famine-stricken country.
"There is nothing under consideration or being pushed for with regard to sending humanitarian aid through an international body," the senior official told reporters, requesting anonymity.
"We can consider sending the average amount of aid through an international body if there is a request from the body," the official said, "But the possibility that we will provide rice through the WFP is scant."
Between 2001 and 2004 South Korea annually donated about 100,000 tons of corn to North Korea via the WFP's aid package. Last year's contribution was 32,000 tons of grain, including corn and beans.
A South Korean delegation from the foreign affairs and unification ministries is now in Washington to be briefed about last week's visit to Pyongyang by a U.S. team.
The U.S. team visited Pyongyang to discuss how to guarantee U.S. food aid reaches the most needy people in North Korea. The U.S. has reportedly decided to send 400,000 tons of food aid to the North through the WFP and 100,000 tons through a non-governmental organization but has yet to make a decision on the timing of the aid, apparently to consider the progress in North Korea's denuclearization under a multilateral deal.
Sung Kim, head of the Korean office at the U.S. State Department, brought back boxes of documents on North Korea's nuclear activities after a three-day tour of the North last week in what Washington called an "important first step" towards getting a full declaration of the North's nuclear activity.
Another round of six-nation nuclear talks is expected to be held in June to conclude the current stage of the deal under which the North is supposed to disable its Yongbyon nuclear facilities in return for economic and political rewards, including the U.S. removal of the North from its list of terrorism-sponsoring states.
South Korea has provided about 400,000 to 500,000 tons of food aid to the North every year under the previous two liberal governments despite criticism that they were making too many concessions to the nuclear-armed North.
The conservative Seoul government, which has vowed not to send humanitarian food aid to North Korea without a formal request from Pyongyang, is faced with a dilemma of breaking its principle or drawing public criticism that it did nothing it can do to save North Koreans from another food crisis.
North Korea, apparently angered at President Lee Myung-bak's tougher stance on the communist state, has not made any such a request for aid this year but only stepped up accusations against Lee and his government in recent months.
The North suffered from severe food shortages in the late 1990s when millions of people reportedly died of starvation. It has since depended on foreign handouts to feed its 23 million population.
sshim@yna.co.kr
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