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| Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon speaks during a meeting at the Government Complex Sejong, Wednesday. Yonhap |
By Park Ji-won
South Korea and the U.S. have held working-level talks over the outbreak of African swine fever in North Korea and the South's food aid to the country, officials here said Wednesday.
Rhee Dong-yeol, director-general of the ministry's Korean Peninsula peace regime bureau, met with his counterpart Alex Wong, U.S. deputy assistant secretary for North Korea in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Seoul Government Complex on Tuesday.
The working-level talks focused on discussing specific ways for the South to provide food to the North and preventing the virus from spreading here. Details have not been disclosed yet.
However, Rhee reportedly briefed Wang, informing him that Seoul has asked Pyongyang to resume inter-Korean cooperation to prevent the virus and discuss the provision of food aid to the North, but the South is still waiting for a response. Rhee and Wang also reportedly talked about how the aid will influence the denuclearization negotiation in the future.
As the South needs to get U.S. approval to bring disinfection equipment to Pyongyang, it is expected that Rhee and Wang discussed sanction exemptions.
It took about a month for South Korea to have talks with the U.S. in Seoul since U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun visited the capital on May 10.
If the North accepts the South's offer, it is largely expected that the food aid and disinfection measures will be carried out promptly. DPK lawmaker Sul Hoon, said last week that Seoul may provide 50,000 tons of food aid to North Korea through international organizations, this week, possibly implying that the two Koreas have reached a certain consensus to carry out the aid plan. However, some expect that the North may reject the South's proposal as it has been calling for changing the "U.S.' current way of calculation."
Critics expect that the move may offer a breakthrough in improving inter-Korean relations which have been stalled due to slow progress in denuclearization talks between Pyongyang and Washington since the breakdown of their summit in February.
The South Korean government has pushed for directly providing food aid to the North for months, but failed to do so amid negative public sentiment over the matter. Later, it changed to give food aid through international organizations such as the United Nations World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon also has pledged that the government will take all-out measures near the towns bordering North Korea to prevent the outbreak of the fever including reducing the number of wild pigs as they could carry the virus across the border.
"The government will reduce the population of wild pigs throughout the country as it is highly possible that the North's virus could be introduced through the animal. It is said that a wild pig can travel as far as 15 kilometers a day," Lee said.
He said that the government will ramp up quarantine and disinfection measures while prohibiting feeding left-over food to pigs except in certain cases.
Last month, the South Korean government said North Korea has informed the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) that the swine virus was reported near the border city of China.
Since its outbreak in China in August, the disease has spread to neighboring countries, such as Mongolia and Vietnam.
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