By Na Jeong-ju
Staff Reporter
North Korea has rejected further U.S. food aid and asked international aid groups to leave the country by the end of this month, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday.
The South Korean government, however, called on the North again to restart stalled inter-Korean dialogue, saying it will lose an opportunity to develop economic cooperation projects if it maintains hostile policies.
The latest threat came amid escalating tension over North Korea's planned rocket launch, which the world sees as cover for a long-range missile test amid an ongoing joint military exercise by South Korea and the U.S.
State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the North gave no reason for refusing to accept U.S. food aid, but hinted that Pyongyang became hostile at the U.S. request to issue visas for Korean-speaking monitors from the World Food Program (WFP).
The five aid groups working in the North to distribute U.S. food have been asked to leave by the end of March, said Joy Portella, spokeswoman for the international aid agency Mercy Corps. Their distribution program had been scheduled to run until June.
The U.S. has delivered 169,000 tons of food to North Korea since May, when Washington pledged to provide up to 500,000 tons to help alleviate the North's chronic food shortage.
``The last shipment of U.S. food aid, which was nearly 5,000 metric tons of vegetable oil and corn-soy blend, arrived in North Korea in late January, and is being distributed by U.S. non-governmental organizations,'' Wood said.
``I know that the visa issuance was still an issue to be worked out," the spokesman said. ``Whether or not that is the reason ― the real reason that the North decided to do what it's doing, I don't know.''
North Korea has been refusing to issue visas to Korean-speaking monitors, whose mission is to assure that the food aid is not being funneled to the military and government officials.
The WFP said earlier that North Korea will need more than 800,000 tons of additional food aid from abroad to feed its 24 million people this year despite a comparatively good harvest.
The conservative Lee Myung-bak government of South Korea did not provide food aid to North Korea last year, demanding the North make progress in the six-party talks on dismantling its nuclear weapons programs.
North Korea faces chronic food shortages and has relied on outside aid to help feed its people since famine reportedly killed as many as two million in the 1990s as a result of natural disasters and mismanagement.