Aid groups urge transparency on funding, lifting of ban on N. Korea trip

By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Aug. 3 (Yonhap) -- South Korean aid groups said Monday they will not
accept the government's "arbitrary" selection of their North Korea projects for
funding unless it gives a full explanation of the selection criteria and lifts a
ban on cross-border trips.
The government plans to resume 3.5-billion-won (US$2.86 million) worth of
humanitarian aid to North Korea through non-governmental organizations this week,
months after it froze such state funding over the North's rocket and nuclear
tests. But its closed-door selection of 10 aid groups out of 47 applicants raised
criticism that the controlled funding only fuels internal rifts and rivalry.
"This decision will only drive our aid projects, which continued cooperatively
for nearly 10 years, to division and competition. I wonder if this arbitrary
selection is a way of taming non-governmental organizations," Park Hyun-seok from
Rose Club Korea, a Christian group focused on medical aid, said in an emergency
meeting of the Korea NGO Council for Cooperation with North Korea, an umbrella
organization of 56 Seoul-based aid groups.
The meeting was convened after media reports that the Unification Ministry was
about to announce the 10 aid groups to be funded by the government. Officials
said the recipients will be those involved in "emergency aid" or projects aimed
at helping the disabled, children and women rather than long-term development
projects in farming and other industrial areas.
"I can accept the selective funding, but only on the condition that the
government approve aid shipments and North Korea visits. I can accept the fact
that they are not giving us taxpayers' money, but they should at least allow aid
shipment so that individual donations can reach the North Koreans," said Im
Jong-cheol from another organization which provides medicine to North Korean
children.
The ministry initially suspended its funding for such aid after North Korea
launched a long-range rocket in early April. After the North's nuclear test in
May, the ministry further strained inter-Korean exchanges, banning humanitarian
aid shipments and monitoring visits to the North.
During the first half of this year, South Korea executed only 2.8 percent of its
yearly budget for economic and humanitarian aid to North Korea, or 42.42 billion
won out of its inter-Korean cooperation fund of 1.5 trillion won, according to
ministry data.
In signs of a policy shift last week, Seoul greenlighted the first humanitarian
aid visit to North Korea since the nuclear blast by allowing an eight-day trip by
World Vision workers to potato seedling farms in Pyongyang and provincial towns.
Kim Nam-shik, director general of the ministry's Inter-Korean Exchanges and
Cooperation Bureau who attended the aid groups' meeting, said the government's
humanitarian initiative on North Korea is limited by larger, international
circumstances, noting U.N. financial and other sanctions being implemented to
curb the communist state's nuclear and missile activity.
"The government understands the difficulties that aid organizations are faced
with and will try to expand its funding and allow more visits to North Korea. But
I must say there are restrictions to such efforts, with the U.N. sanctions. The
situation cannot be the same after a nuclear test," Kim said.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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