According to the Joong Ang Ilbo:
A South Korean civic group sent a large shipment of food aid for North Korean infants, a major humanitarian assistance approved by the Park Geun-hye administration.
A ship carrying 26,000 cans of powdered milk totaling 22.1 tons departed for North Korea yesterday from Incheon Port, west of Seoul. The amount can feed about 13,000 babies for a month, according to the civic group 1090 Peace and Unification Campaign, which is in partnership with the JoongAng Ilbo.
The milk, worth about 340 million won ($316,868) wholesale, will arrive in Nampo, a western port city of North Korea, via Dandong, a port in China.
“At a moment of transition in inter-Korean relations with the ongoing reunions of separated families, it is a meaningful event to send the powdered milk for North Korean babies,” Lee Young-sun, chairman of the group and a former president of Hallym University, told the JoongAng Ilbo.
Along with medicine, powdered milk is needed in the North. Despite frosty relations with Pyongyang over the past few years, Seoul has frequently approved shipments of powdered milk or medicine by civic groups in South Korea. The Ministry of Unification, which is in charge of the approvals, green-lighted the civic group’s plan to send the milk on Friday.
President Park Geun-hye emphasized the need for humanitarian assistance to North Korea at a New Year’s press conference on Jan. 6.
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Powdered milk sent to hungry babies in North
Joong Ang Ilbo
2014-2-25
