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Report: ROK to announce DPRK aid this week

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-10-25 16:53

SEOUL: The Republic of Korea (ROK) is considering sending up to 3 million tons of corn to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in what would be its first direct food aid to its impoverished neighbor in nearly two years, a news report said Sunday.

The ROK planned to announce the aid as early as this week, Yonhap news agency reported, citing unidentified government sources.

The Unification Ministry, which handles relations with the DPRK, said it couldn't immediately confirm the report. Spokesman Chun Hae-sung said the ROK will finalize its aid plan "soon," and corn is one item the government was considering.

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Unification Minister Hyun In-taek told lawmakers Friday that the ROK will soon send a "minimum amount of humanitarian aid" to the DPRK.

The food would be the first humanitarian assistance to the DPRK by the conservative administration of President Lee Myung-bak, which since taking power in early 2008 has linked aid to the DPRK's progress in abandoning its nuclear programs.

The DPRK has faced chronic food shortages since flooding and mismanagement destroyed its state-controlled economy in the mid-1990s, and it has relied on outside assistance from China, international organizations and others to feed its 24 million people.

The reported amount of corn aid would be much smaller than the hundreds of thousands of tons of food and fertilizer that the ROK's liberal governments sent to the DPRK for a decade before Lee took office.

Earlier this month, Pyongyang demanded that Seoul give it "unspecified" humanitarian aid in return for cooperation in reuniting more families separated for more than half a century by the Korean War.

The officials from the ROK said they were considering resuming aid but have ruled out assistance on the large scale of previous governments.

Relations between the two Koreas have shown signs of improvement in recent months as Pyongyang has tried to reach out to Seoul and Washington following months of tension over its nuclear and missile tests earlier this year. Observers have said the DPRK is feeling the pain of United Nations sanctions put in place after the tests.

The 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, leaving the divided peninsula still technically at war.