By Kim Young-jin
Civic groups sending aid to North Korea voiced concern Wednesday over the new requirements from the South Korean government aimed at improving the transparency of their deliveries.
Officials of the groups said the government demanded that some agencies submit written pledges detailing the sites they plan to visit during trips to monitor the delivery of flour. It warned that failure to do so could lead to disadvantages in future requests to send aid.
The move suggests that Seoul, which must approve any cross-border travel, is looking to improve its monitoring capabilities amid ongoing suspicions that supplies to the communist state gets diverted to its military.
But the civic groups, which previously submitted the details of their trips verbally, said the new measure put them in a corner due to chronic difficulties in dealing with the North and gave the government too much control over their activities.
“It’s sort of unfair,” an officer of a group sending flour northward said on condition of anonymity. “Our partners in the North can change the schedule anytime. So by signing our consent, we could end up getting a setback.”
His group falls under the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation (KCRC), which has been shipping a total of 2,500 tons of flour northward in batches, the last of which is slated for delivery today.
An official from the Ministry of Unification, which oversees inter-Korean affairs, said written consent was aimed at securing transparency and preventing the aid from being sent where it wasn’t intended.
Aid to the impoverished state has been largely on hold since last year over the North’s two deadly provocations.
Seoul has since allowed for a limited number of groups to deliver certain items, citing appeals from the groups as well as humanitarian concerns. Officials said Seoul secured its highest-ever level of monitoring capabilities before allowing flour shipments to resume.
Civic monitors from the KCRC have so far made three trips to monitor and were allowed to visit childcare facilities to verify its deliveries had arrived.
Lee Woon-sik, one of the monitors, said the North had begrudgingly allowed the monitoring to secure the supplies but that monitoring did not always prevent the military from benefiting.
“There is always a possibility that the North could divert aid,” Yonhap News Agency quoted him as saying.
Many aid workers say that local civic groups have struggled in the wake of the punitive measures over the deadly provocations.
The United Nations estimates that six million North Koreans are in dire need of food aid. The isolated state has survived off of international aid since the late 1990s when it experienced a massive famine that some believe killed up to 2 million people.
