S. Korea to resume humanitarian aid to North Korea

Seoul, July 25 (Yonhap) -- The South Korean government plans to resume
humanitarian aid to North Korea through non-governmental organizations, months
after it froze such state funding over the North's rocket and nuclear tests,
officials said Saturday.

The Unification Ministry will present the plan in a meeting next week with about
10 humanitarian aid organizations that have requested the funding, the officials
said, requesting anonymity, as the policy has yet to be publicly announced. The
extent of the aid was not known.
The ministry had aid groups apply for funding from February to March in a scheme
in which the government matches funds collected by each of the aid groups.
But the ministry halted its budget execution after North Korea launched a
long-range rocket in early April, drawing condemnation from regional countries
that believed the launch was a disguised missile test. Cross-border exchanges
were further strained after the North's nuclear test in May.
Adding to the tension, a South Korean worker at a joint industrial complex in
North Korea has been detained incommunicado since late March on accusations of
criticizing the North's political system and trying to persuade a North Korean
worker to defect to the South.
The reasons for the latest decision to resume aid were still vague. Officials
only said it came on the grounds of the urgency of North Korea's need for
humanitarian aid, as well as Seoul's policy to separate humanitarian issues from
the political situation.
But the move raised speculation Seoul may be willing to show flexibility in
reaching out to North Korea to break the prolonged diplomatic stalemate.
Inter-Korean relations dipped to their lowest in a decade after conservative
President Lee Myung-bak took office last year, adopting a tougher stance on
Pyongyang's nuclear program and pledging more scrutiny over aid to the North.
South Korea has executed only 1.8 percent of its yearly budget for economic aid
to North Korea during the first four months of this year. Unification Ministry
data show it spent only 26.91 billion won (US$21.5 million) during the
January-April period out of its inter-Korean cooperation fund worth 1.5 trillion
won.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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