South Korea will send a promised 5,000 tons of rice and other
South Korea will send a promised 5,000 tons of rice and other aid supplies to North Korea next month after torrential rain devastated the northwestern region of reclusive nation, a report said Sunday.
South Korea’s government will meet Tuesday to approve an eight billion-won (seven million US dollar) aid package to be sent via the Red Cross, according to a report from Yonhap news agency.
The relief, announced by Seoul earlier this month, includes 5,000 tons of rice, 10,000 tons of cement, three million packs of instant noodles and other medical and emergency supplies.
Last month floods washed away thousands of homes, roads, railways and farmland across North Korea, causing an unspecified number of deaths.
Typhoon Kompasu, which hit the peninsula in early September, further battered the impoverished country, killing dozens of people and bringing more damage to the nation, which is vulnerable to flooding after years of deforestation.
Aid groups warned that this year’s flooding would aggravate the North’s chronic food shortages.
But Seoul has been cautious in sending large-scale rice aid to the Pyongyang amid questions over whether the food will reach flood-stricken civilians or be diverted to feed the North’s 1.2 million-strong military.
Several South Korean lawmakers including the Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek, Seoul’s pointman on inter-Korean affairs, openly expressed doubts about the distribution of food aid in the North.
“I think transparency in the distribution of humanitarian food aid to North Korea has not been ensured. I’m not certain whether rice has been handed out properly,” Hyun told lawmakers this month.
Some lawmakers also claimed more than one million tons of rice was stored in military silos across North Korea.
Pyongyang complained earlier this month that the 5,000 tons of rice pledged is “not enough to feed North Koreans even for a day.”
Seoul used to ship 400,000 tons of rice a year plus 300,000 tons of fertiliser to its northern neighbour, but the shipments ended in 2008 as the South’s conservative government adopted a harder line towards Pyongyang.
-AFP/wk