US flood aid shipment arrives in north korea

KAPTAAN

Prime VIP
The United States has provided a
small yet symbolic shipment of
emergency relief items to flood-
hit North Korea, in the latest sign
of thawing ties between the
wartime foes.
Heavy rain and tropical storms
have pounded North Korea in the
past few months, leaving dozens
of people dead or missing and
displacing thousands of others.
Washington has not responded
with food aid, but pledged to
provide emergency help for the
flooding.
A cargo plane loaded with
$900,000 worth of food, medical
aid, soap, blankets and cooking
kits from the United States
touched down at Pyongyang's
Sunan airport late Saturday,
according to footage from the
Associated Press Television News
from the North Korean capital.
A group of officials from the
North Carolina-based aid group
Samaritan's Purse also flew to
Pyongyang to watch the aid
delivery process. The APTN
footage showed airport workers
clad in luminescent safety vests
pulling pallets of shipments from
the plane and loading them to
airport vehicles in darkness.
"It is loaded with medicines, with
food items for small children, with
water filtration systems, blankets,
other emergency relief supplies,
for people here (in North Korea),
who have been affected by the
torrential rains, and the terrible
flooding, that has come at a very
difficult time," said Melvin
Cheatham, special assistant to the
president of Samaritan's Purse.
Samaritan's Purse said it has
pledged $1.2 million in addition to
the $900,000 that the U.S.
government has allocated for aid
to North Korea through U.S.-
based charities.
The agency said it has worked
with the U.S. government and
several other Christian
organizations to send the aid as
they try to continue gaining
humanitarian access to North
Korea.
The aid delivery comes amid
recent glimmers of diplomatic
hope after more than a year of
tension on the Korean peninsula,
with the North allegedly
torpedoing a South Korean
warship and shelling a South
Korean island. A total of 50 South
Koreans died in the attacks.
American and North Korean
officials met in New York in late
July to discuss a possible
resumption of long-dormant
negotiations on ending the
North's nuclear weapons
program in return for aid and
other concessions. Nuclear
envoys of the two Koreas also
met in July and agreed to work
toward the talks' resumption, and
Pyongyang said last month that it
had accepted Washington's
proposal to discuss recovering
remains of American troops killed
during the 1950-53 Korean War.
The United States fought
alongside South Korea during the
war, which ended with an
armistice, not a peace treaty. The
United States has not established
diplomatic relations with North
Korea and stations about 28,500
troops in South Korea to deter
potential aggression by the North.
Heavy rain can be catastrophic for
North Korea due to poor
drainage, and flooding in
previous years has destroyed
crops and pushed the country
deeper into poverty. The World
Food Program said earlier this
year that an estimated 6 million of
North Korea's 24 million people
would go hungry without help
from outside donors due to the
impact on the harvest.
However, there are persistent
concerns among some
governments that aid to the
North is routinely diverted to its
powerful military.
The U.S. State Department said
that providing humanitarian
assistance is separate from
political and security concerns.
"This emergency relief
demonstrates our continuing
concern for the well-being of the
North Korean people," it said in a
statement.
Even a small amount carries
weight, one analyst said.
"However small they may be, aid
offers and other developments
enhance the mood for greater
political cooperation," said Kim
Young-yoon, a senior researcher
at the state-funded Korea
Institute for National Unification
in Seoul.
___
Associated Press writers Sam Kim
and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South
Korea, and Bradley Klapper in
Washington contributed to this
report.
 
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