South Korea: South Korea resumes humanitarian aid to North Korea

FOCUS Information Agency - 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, as quoted by Yonhap.

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 (photo) 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.

Published by Mike Hitchen,
Putting principles before profits
Bilateral Relations North Korea, South Korea Aid