South Korea will offer 13.3 million US dollars of humanitarian aid to the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) through international agencies,
Seoul's Unification Ministry said Monday.
Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Eui-do told a routine press briefing that
the ministry will tap the Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund for aid to projects of
the World Food Program (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) for health
services of mothers and children in the DPRK.
The government will provide 7 million US dollars for the WFP to improve
nutritional assistance to pregnant women and children in the DPRK, while
offering 6.3 million US dollars to the WHO for essential medicine, enhanced
clinics and the training of health manpower there.
It will be the first time since 2007 that South Korea offers assistance to
the DPRK through the WFP. In 2007, the country provided 20 million US dollars
for the agency. Last year, Seoul gave 6.05 million US dollars to the WHO for aid
to Pyongyang.
The new aid came as a follow-up measure on President Park Geun- hye's
signature "Dresden Initiative." When Park traveled to the former East German
city of Dresden in March, she made the three- point initiative to the DPRK such
as humanitarian aid to mothers and children in the DPRK, infrastructure
development and broader inter-Korean exchange in non-political areas.
The spokesman said the assistance to the WFP and the WHO "is closely related
with" the package project for the DPRK's mothers and children seen in the
Dresden Initiative.