North Korea , Janaury 15: North Korea accepted South Korea’s offer of 10,000 tons of food aid today in the latest apparent sign it is seeking better ties after months of hostility.
The South had offered the corn shipment last October but there had been no response from the communist state until now. The shipment will be Seoul’s first official aid to its hungry neighbour for two years.
North Korea sent a fax message saying it “will receive the corn aid,” said Seoul’s unification ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-Joo.
In 2008, the South offered 50,000 tons of corn but the North rejected the shipment amid high tensions.
The North reacted furiously when Seoul’s new conservative government took office in February 2008 and linked major economic aid to progress in nuclear disarmament.
But since August it has been making peace overtures to South Korea and the US.
Yesterday, the cash-strapped nation proposed talks with South Korea about resuming tourism projects, which had earned it tens of millions of dollars a year until relations soured.
The two countries have also agreed to hold separate talks next week on ways to revitalise their jointly-run industrial estate in the North.
Some analysts believe the peace overtures were prompted by tougher United Nations sanctions imposed following the North’s nuclear and missile tests last year.
The North suffered full-scale famine in the 1990s, in which hundreds of thousands died, and since then has relied on foreign food aid to help feed its people.
The UN’s World Food Program estimated last September that a third of North Korea’s women and young children are malnourished. It said the country would run short of almost 1.9 million tons of food in 2009.
—Agencies