S. Korea offers North small-scale corn aid

(ATTN: UPDATES with details)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Oct. 26 (Yonhap) -- South Korea on Monday offered to give North Korea
limited volumes of corn and other humanitarian aid, in what would be the first
official assistance to the impoverished country in nearly two years.
South Korea's Red Cross said in a press release that it sent a fax message to its
North Korean counterpart, stating that it will send 10,000 tons of corn, 20 tons
of milk powder and some medicine "on humanitarian and compatriotic grounds."
The aid, if accepted by the North, would be the first of its kind since South
Korea's Lee Myung-bak government came to power early last year, conditioning
state-level assistance on Pyongyang's denuclearization.
On Oct. 16, North Korea requested humanitarian aid from the South during Red
Cross talks on cross-border family reunions. It was the North's first official
request for assistance from the conservative Lee government.
North Korea has yet to respond to the Red Cross message, but the aid offer is
widely believed to have been coordinated between the two governments through
recent contacts. When North Korea rejected the 50,000 tons of corn Seoul offered
in May last year, tensions were high and Pyongyang was boycotting any dialogue
with Seoul.
"It's difficult to say yet (whether the North would accept), but this is offered
on purely humanitarian grounds," Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung
stressed in a press briefing.
Chun said it will take a month or so for the Red Cross to purchase, pack and ship
the corn worth US$33.38 million and $126,870 of milk powder.
The 10,000 tons of corn is hardly enough to assuage the chronic food shortages in
the North. The country's harvest this year is believed to fall more than one
million tons short of food to feed its 24 million people. South Korean visitors
have reported the ill conditions of rice paddies and corn fields due to the lack
of fertilizer.
Lee's liberal predecessors annually provided about 300,000 tons of fertilizer and
400,000 tons of rice to the North over the past decade, but the large-scale aid
came to a complete halt last year.
"Considering the North's food shortages and various other circumstances, the
10,000 tons would not be sufficient," Chun said, but "no additional aid" is
currently under review.
In another conciliatory move, the ministry decided to provide 949 million won for
several local humanitarian organizations operating in the North, the second such
funding following one in August.
Months after stoking tension with its nuclear test, North Korea shifted toward
softer diplomacy with South Korea and the United States, inviting dignitaries to
Pyongyang and lifting restrictions on inter-Korean business ventures in August.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il also sent high-level envoys to Seoul to mourn the
death of late former President Kim Dae-jung. In a meeting with Lee, the envoys
conveyed the North's desire for an inter-Korean summit, Seoul officials later
said.
The aid offer comes amid rumors that inter-Korean contacts met to discuss a
possible summit between Lee and the North Korean leader. A secret South Korean
delegation was found to have recently met with a senior North Korean official,
Kim Yang-gon, in Singapore.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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