Relief aid on way to North Korea

Flooding that may have killed thousands in North Korea is being ignored because of the country’s pariah status after recent missile launches, a South Korean aid group said today as it prepared to ship aid for victims.

Eight containers carrying 100 tonnes of flour, 37,500 packs of instant noodles and 15,000 pieces of clothing and candles were being loaded into the cargo ship at the port of Incheon on the western coast of the peninsula.

It would be the first South Korean shipment of relief goods to North Korea since the flooding began last month, which a South Korean activist group claims has left about 10,000 people dead or missing.

The United Nations has said the disaster killed at least 154 North Koreans and left another 127 or more missing. Getting precise information about events in reclusive North Korea is difficult, where the government controls all media and restricts travel.

“The suffering of North Koreans is being ignored due to political reasons and emergency aid is needed,” Venerable Pomnyun, chairman of Join Together Society, a Seoul-based private relief agency, said at Incheon as the ship was preparing to depart this afternoon for the North Korean port of Nampo.

JTS was also planning to send medical supplies and blankets worth $50,000 (€39,000) to the North via the Chinese border city of Dandong tomorrow and another 100 tons of flour by ship next Wednesday.

Pomnyun expressed hope that the private aid to the impoverished country would help lead the South Korean government to ship relief goods to the North.

North Korea’s Red Cross has rejected an offer from its South Korean counterpart for aid to flood victims, saying it would handle the disaster on its own. The North has also told international aid groups operating in Pyongyang that it doesn’t want them to launch a worldwide appeal for help.

The North’s move, Pomnyun said, is apparently due to its semi-war footing imposed after the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning the North’s recent missile launches and calling for nations to halt any missile-related trade with the country.

“North Korea could not allow monitoring demanded by international community as it is in a security crisis,” he said, explaining why the North didn’t accept international aid but that it doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t accept food aid.

The regime has relied on foreign handouts since the mid-1990s following natural disasters and decades of mismanagement. Famine is believed to have killed up to two million people in the North.

But last year Pyongyang demanded a halt to emergency food aid provided by the UN World Food Programme, which came with strict monitoring requirements. The North agreed this year to new, more limited aid supplies from the WFP.

South Korea, one of key donors to North Korea, recently suspended aid to protest the North’s missile launches and but it appears eventually to provide humanitarian aid to its flood-stricken neighbour even if there is no request, according to South Korean Red Cross officials.

The South’s Korean Council for Reconciliation and Co-operation, which is composed of civic groups and ruling Uri Party and partly funded by the government, has said it would send relief aid to the North by next weekend. It refused to give further details, but said it was likely the aid will be accepted.

Damage from the floods have prompted the North to cancel a scheduled mass propaganda performance and joint North-South celebrations of the liberation of the peninsula from Japanese colonial rule.