North Korea has said it is ready to accept official flood relief from South Korea, but has asked for more details on the aid package being offered, a government official in Seoul said Monday.
A spokesman for the South’s Unification Ministry said the North had responded to Seoul’s aid proposal in a message sent through the Red Cross at the Panmunjom truce village on their heavily-militarised border.
“It said it was ready to accept aid, but asked us to present a detailed plan about items our side plans to send,” the spokesman said.
South Korea had made its proposal last week — the first such aid offer since ties with Pyongyang sank into a deep freeze following the death of the North’s leader Kim Jong-Il last December.
Tensions were further fuelled by a joint US-South Korea military exercise last month that the North denounced as a provocative rehearsal for war.
The impoverished North is grappling with the after-effects of floods in June and July that killed 569 people and inundated 65,280 hectares (161,310 acres) of crop-bearing land, according to official figures from Pyongyang.
The South Korean government last sent aid to the North two years ago, although civilian groups have been allowed to send shipments since then.Official cross-border aid usually goes through the Red Cross.
North Korea suffers chronic food shortages, with the situation exacerbated by floods, droughts and mismanagement. Hundreds of thousands died during a famine in the mid to late-1990s.
