By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
South Korea plans to send emergency aid soon to North Korea hit by week-long heavy rains that reportedly devastated thousands of homes, farmland and infrastructure in the poverty-stricken state, the Ministry of Unification said Thursday.
``We will first send relief supplies that do not require consultation with North Korea. We are consulting with South Korea's Red Cross on the list of items and a timetable now,'' a ministry official said, asking not to be named.
The emergency aid items will include blankets, flour, instant noodles and medicine, he said, adding Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung is to announce the plan on Friday.
The official denied some local reports that Seoul will send 100,000 tons of rice to Pyongyang in emergency aid, saying the infrastructure for delivering rice to the North is already at full capacity.
The South has been delivering 400,000 tons of rice to the North as a loan under agreements regarding cross-border economic cooperation.
The Join Together Society, a Seoul-based humanitarian aid group, said it would donate corn worth about $250,000 to North Korea to help the North recover from the flooding.
North Korea is appealing for international aid after at least 200,000 people were displaced and vast swaths of farmland submerged by the worst flooding since the 1970s.
There have been no confirmed casualties, but 200 to 800 people are reported missing while attempts to provide emergency aid have been hampered by damaged bridges, railway tracks and roads, according to reports.
Already struggling to feed its 22 million population, 11 percent of the North's rice and corn crop was destroyed by the deluge, a North Korean official from western Pyeongan Province was quoted by Pyongyang Radio. The rain even flooded the center of the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, he said.
``Almost all areas in the province were affected by large floods. Many residents were reported dead or missing, and we estimate that around 17,000 people were left displaced,'' the unidentified official said in the report, monitored in Seoul.
The North's official Korea Central News Agency said earlier this week that the torrential rain from Aug. 7 to Aug. 12 destroyed at least 30,000 homes of 63,300 families, and more than 540 bridges and sections of railway.
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said Thursday that the heavy rains are expected to cut grain production by about 450,000 tons this year, more than a tenth of the North's annual average harvest.
In an interview with Radio Free Asia, WFP spokesman Paul Risley said a U.N. joint survey team received such a report on the damage in a face-to-face meeting with Pyongyang officials.
If the damage materializes, the international community should consider ways of offering humanitarian aid to the North in the long term, Risley was quoted as saying. He warned that the flooding could displace as many as 300,000 North Koreans.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday that he had ordered units of the global organization to evaluate the needs of North Koreans in the wake of the flooding and help the country.
The United States is also seeking ways to assist the North. U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that aid from Washington would likely be channeled to North Korea though the U.N.