By Kim Young-jin
Seoul said Tuesday it would deliver baby food to North Korea next week as the first part of a 5 billion won ($4.7 million) package to help the communist state recover from severe floods.
The South Korean Red Cross told its northern counterpart it would send 200,000 packs of baby food in trucks across the heavily fortified border on Sept. 15.
The rest of the package, which includes biscuits, instant noodles and emergency supplies, will follow by mid-October, the Red Cross said in a release.
The humanitarian gesture comes a month after Seoul initially made the offer in response to the North’s reporting of several dozen deaths from the summer rains that drenched the peninsula.
Seoul denied the North’s subsequent request for food and cement. Pyongyang has been silent on the matter since, which the Lee administration has apparently taken as acceptance of the aid.
It will be the first shipment of government-level assistance since last November, when the Kim Jong-il regime sharply raised tensions by shelling Yeonpyeong Island, killing four.
It also allegedly sank the naval vessel Cheonan, triggering tension on the Korean Peninsula and straining relations with the southern counterpart. In recent months, the Lee administration has eased its punitive measures, which had halted nearly all aid and travel to the North, allowing civic groups to deliver and monitor humanitarian aid.
The South’s Red Cross branch said officials from each side should hold talks to discuss how to ensure that the aid reaches its intended targets.
It remains to be seen whether the aid will lead to a further thaw in tensions. Some observers say the gesture could lead to another round of reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War. Others are not as bullish, citing a spat over seized South Korean property at a stalled joint tourism project in the North.
Tensions have eased in the wake of surprise bilateral denuclearization talks in Bali in July as the first step towards the possible resumption of multilateral negotiations.
Analysts say the North has in an all out agenda to secure aid ahead of 2012, the year it has promised to emerge as a prosperous country by overcoming the current econoimc debacle.