A new survey has revealed that 7 out of 10 members of the 19th National Assembly are in favor of the consistent provision of humanitarian aid to North Korea, along with the separating of such aid from political and military concerns.<\/p>\n
Professor Kang Dong Whan of Donga University reported the survey findings at a debate event held yesterday by the liberal ‘Korean NGO Council for Cooperation with North Korea’ and ‘Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation’.<\/p>\n
According to the survey findings, 63 out of the 88 lawmakers polled responded that they either \u201cagree\u201d (39) or \u201cstrongly agree\u201d (24) with the statement \u201cHumanitarian aid should proceed independent of the inter-Korean political and military situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Only 4 lawmakers came out against the statement, while 20 more gave a neutral response. <\/p>\n
The survey, which was conducted by a combination of email, fax and face-to-face meeting between July 24th and August 22nd this year, included 39 lawmakers from the ruling Saenuri Party, 38 with the opposition Democratic United Party, 3 from the left wing United Progressive Party, 3 from the right wing Liberty Forward Party and 5 independents. There was no requirement to respond to every question.<\/p>\n
Asked what the greatest benefit of humanitarian aid is, 25 responded that \u201cit provides a minimum safety valve for inter-Korean relations\u201d and 16 said that \u201cit improves the North Korean people\u2019s image of South Korea\u201d, while both \u201cit improves the humanitarian situation in North Korea\u201d and \u201cit improves inter-Korean relations\u201d garnered 15 votes each.<\/p>\n
In line with the findings, 34 of the respondents called for the phased removal of the May 24th Measures, the policy put in place following the Cheonan sinking of March 26th 2010, while 24 said the measures must be eased in some areas including humanitarian aid, and 22 called for the measures to be removed entirely with immediate effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new survey has revealed that 7 out of 10 members of the 19th National Assembly are in favor of the consistent provision of humanitarian aid to North Korea, along with the separating of such aid from political and military concerns. Professor Kang Dong Whan of Donga University reported the survey findings at a debate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":21024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n