South Korea and China offer aid after explosion

South Korea and China today led international promises for aid for North Korea to help cope with its disastrous train explosion.

China’s official Xinhua news agency said Beijing would send 10 million yuan (€1m) worth of food, medical equipment and tents.

South Korea’s Red Cross chief Lee Yoon-gu said the north had not responded to its offer to send doctors to the scene.

The massive blast at a railway station in Ryongchon on Thursday reportedly killed 154 people and injured more than 1,000.

Foreign aid officials visited the site today and found widespread destruction but the dead and injured had been removed from the scene.

Lee, speaking at a news conference after a visit to Pyongyang, said he offered to send doctors because he believes “there could be many burn victims”.

North Korea had not clarified what it wanted, but Lee said his agency is prepared to send blankets, clothes, towels and other household goods as early as tomorrow.

Jay Matta, a Red Cross official who visited the blast site, said North Korea had requested 2,000 metric tons of construction materials to begin rebuilding the shattered town.

“The priorities at the moment for emergency assistance is rehabilitation of the town itself, which includes reconstruction of damaged structures, supply of construction materials such as cement, fuel, timber and some food aid,” he said.

Lee said about 2,000 houses are believed to have been destroyed or damaged by the train explosion near the border with China on Thursday.

Earlier Saturday, the South Korean government said it will send US$1m (€840,000) worth of medicine, food and other aid to North Korea.

The South said in a statement that it will give another US$200,000 (€168,000) through the World Health Organisation, while the Red Cross societies of the two Koreas will discuss “providing additional assistance including medical personnel and ships equipped with a hospital”.

Seoul will also contact North Korean officials to discuss the aid efforts, it said.

The plans came immediately after acting President Goh Kun discussed aid measures for North Korea at an emergency meeting with Cabinet ministers.

The two Koreas have remained technically at war since fighting on the peninsula ended in 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty. They are divided by a heavily armed border guarded in part by 37,000 US soldiers stationed in the south.

North Korea has expressed appreciation for offers of international humanitarian assistance.

In its first report on the disaster, the North’s official KCNA news agency said that the explosion occurred ”due to the electrical contact caused by carelessness during the shunting of wagons loaded with ammonium nitrate fertiliser and tank wagons.” Ammonium nitrate is also used for explosives and rocket fuel.

KCNA said: “The investigation conducted so far shows that the damage is very serious.”

North Korea “is doing its utmost to recover from the damage caused by the accident as early as possible and help the living of the people in the afflicted area return to normal”, it said.