Seoul under pressure to give North food aid

SEOUL — South Korea is in a quandary over how to deal with the looming humanitarian crisis in North Korea stemming from a serious food shortage.

Since taking office in February, conservative President Lee Myung-bak has vowed not to give any food aid before Pyongyang makes an official request and takes reciprocal humanitarian action to address concerns about the fate of South Koreans kidnapped to the North.

But the South Korean government is facing mounting pressure to provide food aid for the country’s starving brethren in the communist North, where there are fears of massive famine without immediate outside relief aid.

Furthermore, a U.S. move to donate food supplies to the North in return for concessions in the recent denuclearization process has fueled concerns that South Korean influence may be diminished.

Seoul is considering providing food aid indirectly through the U.N. relief agency but has been delaying a decision in an apparent bid to test public response at home.

“The government can send aid [to the North] through the U.N. World Food Program (WFP), as it did in the past if there is a request from the body,” a senior government official told reporters on Tuesday.

“But nothing is currently under consideration or being pushed for with regard to sending humanitarian aid through an international body,” he said.

The official, a Foreign Ministry spokesman who was not authorized to speak for attribution, said the government would stick to the aid-after-request principle but did not rule out providing food through international organizations.

South Korea annually donated about 100,000 tons of corn to the North through the WFP’s aid package between 2001 and 2004. Last year, it donated 32,000 tons of corn and beans through the U.N. food agency. But the amount was far short of the South’s direct food aid to the North, which stood at 400,000 to 500,000 tons of rice every year under the previous two liberal governments.

The Bush administration is also discussing ways in which the United States might help get food aid to North Korea, the White House said this week.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said such assistance might be made possible through the auspices of nongovernmental organizations or a U.N. program, the Associated Press reported.

North Korea has experienced repeated bouts of famine since the mid-1990s, in which millions of people are thought to have died.

In the latest crisis, “one or two deaths were happening every day in rural areas,” said Good Friends organization, which is thought to have extensive sources inside the Stalinist country.

The aid group warns that about 200,000 to 300,000 people might die of starvation in the next two months if there is no immediate boost in food supplies.