Yonhap
12/3/2006
South Korea gave North Korea a record amount of aid in the first 10 months of the year but most of it had been shipped before tension spiked over the communist country’s missile and nuclear tests, a government report showed Sunday.
South Korea has virtually suspended its regular aid shipment to North Korea, mostly fertilizer, since Pyongyang test-launched multiple missiles in July. Its Oct. 9 nuclear test further strained inter-Korean relations.
From January to October, the Seoul government supplied 211 billion won (US$227 million) worth of goods, mostly fertilizer, to North Korea, breaking the previous full-year record of 185.4 billion won in 1995, according to the Unification Ministry report.
In 2005, the Seoul government shipped aid supplies worth 135.9 billion won to the North suffering a chronic food shortage.
More than half of this year’s aid supplies, or worth 141.3 billion won, were shipped in the first half when the government sent 35,000 tons of fertilizers to Pyongyang. The remainder was send between July and October to help flood victims there.
The cumulative value of South Korean aid since 1995 reached 1.2 trillion won as of the end of October, the report said.
Private South Korean donors gave the North 69.4 billion won worth of aid during the January-October period, pushing their cumulative donations since 1995 to 620.1 billion won, it said.
