By Lee Tae-hoon
The government has decided to cease provision of humanitarian aid to North Korea as tensions heighten on the Korean Peninsula, following Tuesday’s exchange of artillery fire, an official of the Unification Ministry said Wednesday.
“As of today, the Korean Red Cross will suspend delivery of relief items to the flood victims in Shinuiju, North Korea,” Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said.
“The ministry has also individually notified other civic groups that they will be prohibited from sending relief supplies to the North.”
Chun said the government has imposed a ban on 3,700 tons of cement and 580 million won ($505,500) worth of medicines, which were ready for shipment to the North.
Eight South Korean civic groups, including the Red Cross, were waiting for the government’s approval for their request to send relief aid totaling at 2.7 billion won to the impoverished North.
The amount of humanitarian aid to the communist regime by South Korean civic groups reached $96.7 million in 2007, but nosedived since the Lee Myung-bak administration took office in Feb. 2008.
The volume of civic aid plunged to $64.6 million in 2008 and $28.6 million in 2009, according to a 2010 report by the Unification Ministry
“The government has decided to postpone the Red Cross talks indefinitely,” he noted, saying that the ministry asked the head of the South Korean Red Cross to deliver such a message to Pyongyang.
Red Cross officials of the two Koreas had agreed to meet Thursday in the South Korean border town of Munsan to discuss ways to regularize the reunions of family members separated by the 1950-1953 Korean War.
The two sides last held talks in the North Korean border town of Gaeseong on Oct. 26 and 27.
Meanwhile, the government banned 495 South Koreans, who were planning to enter the joint venture Wednesday, from entering the Gaeseong Industrial Complex, a joint industrial park located in a North Korean border town.
The Gaeseong Complex was established in 2004 as a symbol of reconciliation between the two Koreas.
Some 700 South Koreans are currently staying at the industrial site, which employs more than 40,000 North Korean workers.
In late May, the government decided to slash the number of South Koreans staying at the inter-Korean complex by half after a multi-national investigation team concluded that Pyongyang was responsible for the sinking of a South Korean frigate on March 26.
Pyongyang has yet to acknowledge its involvement in the downing of the warship, which took the lives of 46 sailors.