S. Korea to unveil extent of corn aid to North this week

SEOUL, Oct. 25 (Yonhap) -- South Korea will notify the North this week that it
will provide small-scale corn aid to the impoverished country, responding to
Pyongyang's rare request for humanitarian assistance from Seoul, officials here
said Sunday.

The planned aid to the North, when announced, will 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.
The government "will set in concrete the type and extent of the aid and present
that to the North within this week," a high-ranking official involved in
inter-Korean affairs said, requesting anonymity as an official announcement has
yet to be made.
Other officials said the aid will consist of one to three tons of corn. Seoul has
ruled out any large-scale aid, in line with its support for U.N. sanctions on
North Korea imposed after Pyongyang's nuclear test in May. The punitive sanctions
aim to curb financial benefits that flow into the country and allegedly fund its
atomic and missile programs.
On Oct. 16, North Korea requested humanitarian aid from the South during Red
Cross talks over cross-border family reunions. It was the North's first official
request for assistance from the conservative Lee government.
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 President Lee, the
envoys also conveyed the North's desire for an inter-Korean summit.
In a rare instance of Pyongyang-Washington bilateral contact, Sung Kim, U.S.
special envoy to the six-party nuclear talks, met with Ri Gun, director general
of the North American affairs bureau of North Korea's Foreign Ministry, in New
York on Saturday over the resumption of stalled nuclear negotiations.
Over the past decade, President Lee's liberal predecessors annually provided
about 400,000 tons of rice and 300,000 tons of fertilizer to the North, seeking
inter-Korean reconciliation through economic and social exchanges.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)

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