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South Korea sees no large-scale aid for North
SEOUL, Oct. 18 (Yonhap) -- South Korea is not considering providing any large-scale aid to the impoverished North despite Pyongyang's official request for humanitarian assistance, a senior government official said Sunday.
North Korea presented the request during Red Cross talks over cross-border family reunions on Friday, its first official call for aid after President Lee Myung-bak took office last year. Pyongyang did not specify what kind of humanitarian aid it wants from the South, which responded that it would review the request.
When political relations thrived with liberal governments in Seoul, the South customarily sent hundreds of thousands of tons of rice and fertilizer annually to the North on occasions of reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War. But massive aid came to a halt after the conservative Lee took power with his policy priority on the termination of the North's nuclear program.
"In the current situation, it's difficult to provide large-scale aid," the high-level official at the Unification Ministry told reporters at an informal meeting, requesting anonymity.
"The government will consider (small-scale) assistance for vulnerable groups there like infants and children," he said.
The remarks mirrored Seoul's unwavering position to condition inter-Korean exchanges on progress in the North's denuclearization. South Korea has also been consistently backing U.N. punitive sanctions imposed over the North's nuclear test in May, which aims to cut cash flows and outside aid to the country so as to stem its funding to atomic and missile programs.
Large-scale rice and fertilizer aid "goes beyond the boundary of purely humanitarian assistance," the official said. "In the current situation, to provide aid at such a level is far from the government's policy principle toward North Korea."
The official said the ministry will collect opinions from the legislature and other government agencies during an Oct. 23 parliamentary audit session on the ministry.
Regarding the kind of amount of aid Seoul might give, a different official, also on condition of anonymity, said less than five tons of corn aid was expected.
At the Red Cross talks, South Korea proposed holding family reunions next month and around the traditional Lunar New Year's holiday of Seol in February. North Korea raised the humanitarian issue to go in tandem with reunion events.
The most recent round of family reunions, held in late September at Mount Kumgang on the North's east coast, was the first in nearly two years.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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