Seoul to offer $13.3m in aid to Pyongyang
The Republic of Korea will offer $13.3 million in humanitarian aid to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea through international agencies, Seoul's Unification Ministry said on Monday.
ROK Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Eui-do told a news briefing that the ministry will tap the Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund for aid to projects of the World Food Program and the World Health Organization for health services for mothers and children in the DPRK.
The government will provide $7 million for the WFP to improve nutritional assistance to pregnant women and children in the DPRK, while offering $6.3 million to the WHO for essential medicine, enhanced clinics and the training of health manpower there.
It will be the first time since 2007 that the ROK has offered assistance to the DPRK through the WFP. That year, the ROK provided $20 million for the agency. Last year, Seoul gave $6.05 million to the WHO for aid to Pyongyang.
The new aid came as a follow-up measure to President Park Geun-hye's signature Dresden Initiative.
When Park traveled to Dresden, in the former German Democratic Republic, in March, she established the three-point initiative offering humanitarian aid to mothers and children in the DPRK, infrastructure development and broader inter-Korean exchange in nonpolitical areas.
The spokesman said the assistance to the WFP and the WHO "is closely related with" the project to help the DPRK's mothers and children included in the Dresden Initiative.
(China Daily 08/12/2014 page11)
