This year’s first private flood relief aid for North Korea from a South Korean organization is likely to be delivered by road sometime this week, after the Ministry of Unification revealed yesterday that World Vision has applied for permission to send a team of approximately ten people to the North with 500T of wheat flour. Having already approved the 500T of aid itself, the team’s visit seems likely also to be approved.
World Vision has already received an invitation to come to North Korea from the authorities in Pyongyang. If approval from the South Korean government is forthcoming, World Vision proposes to use twenty trucks to deliver the flour on the 21st, arriving in Kaesong after passing through Dorasan Inter-Korean Transit Office.
‘Korea NGO Council for Cooperation with North Korea’ (KNCCK), a coalition of 51 NGO groups devoted to aiding North Korea, also wants to deliver 500T of wheat flour to the North, but has not yet received the essential letter of invitation from the North Korean side. However, if and when an invitation is received, the group plans to employ the same method, delivering the aid to Kaesong, the nearest city to the inter-Korean border.
North Korea’s decision to accept the relatively small amount of privately funded aid on offer from private sources in the South is the manifestation of Pyongyang’s strategy of freezing out government-to-government contact with the Lee administration but permitting private social and cultural exchanges. It’s a strategy which allows contacts with relatively friendly groups in the South to persist, something that will make them easier to fully revive as and when a more flexible South Korean government comes into office.
