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South Korea considers aid for flood-hit North

Posted on: Tuesday, 8 August 2006, 05:50 CDT

By Jon Herskovitz

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea is considering a one-time package of aid to avert famine in North Korea despite strains between the neighbors over Pyongyang's July 5 missile tests, officials said on Tuesday.

Three major storms hit North Korea last month, causing floods that killed at least 151 people, and possibly more.

A U.N. World Food Program (WFP) official said the floods devastated the secretive state's potato crop and will severely cut into rice production.

"North Korea is seriously suffering due to the flooding," a Unification Ministry official said by telephone.

"However, we have to be sure that what we are considering has to be separate from the regular, government-level aid that was suspended due to the missile launch," said the official, who asked not to be named.

Details of the aid package should be available later this week, the official said.

The North, which battles chronic food shortages, has relied on food handouts from Seoul for years.

The South suspended food aid last month after Pyongyang officials stormed out of an inter-Korean meeting at which Seoul asked the North to explain its missile launches.

The South said it could resume food aid if the North returned to stalled talks on ending its nuclear weapons program.

Last week, the main opposition Grand National Party, which has taken a hard line against Pyongyang, said Seoul should consider a humanitarian package to help flood victims.

Whether North Korea will accept the South's help is another matter. It has called a halt to several cooperation projects after the acrimonious inter-Korean talks.

North Korea has turned down aid offers from South Korea's Red Cross, but a North Korean official was quoted as saying last week it would not refuse help if it came with no strings attached.

North Korea's official media reported on the floods on Tuesday with accounts of those who gave their lives so mass-produced pictures of its "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung and "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il would not be swallowed by floods and mudslides.

"Our people put the party and the leader above their lives and property on the crossroads of life and death," its KCNA news agency said.

The WFP has said the North declined its offer of help, saying it would deal with the problem on its own. International agencies say the storms have left tens of thousands homeless.

The Choson Sinbo, a pro-North newspaper published in Japan, said that as of July 17, 549 people were killed, 295 went missing and 3,043 were injured in the storms.

Famine in North Korea during the 1990s, brought about by years of floods, droughts and a mismanaged agriculture sector killed at least one million people. The WFP said studies have indicated as many as 2.5 million North Koreans, or about 10 percent of its population, perished.

Even in a good year, North Korea falls about 1 million tonnes short of the food it needs. South Korea has provided 500,000 tonnes of rice annually to the North over the past few years.

(Additional reporting by Jang Sera)

Source: REUTERS

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