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S. Korea hopes fertilizer aid to N. Korea will ease nuke crisis

South Korea has decided to donate an additional 100,000 tons of fertilizer to famine-hit North Korea, officials said Tuesday, expressing hopes that the humanitarian aid will help defuse the yearlong nuclear crisis.

"The fertilizer aid will help ease food shortages by improving agricultural productivity of the North," the Unification Ministry said in a statement. Seoul's Red Cross will begin shipping the fertilizer, worth $26.6 million, this month.

"We have decided to send more fertilizer aid, considering that our fertilizer aid has helped the North increase agricultural output," a ministry official said. South Korea is also preparing to ship 400,000 tons of rice to the North, he added.

North Korea last month requested an additional 100,000 tons of fertilizer and expressed gratitude for the 200,000 tons it received earlier this year from the South.

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) has forecast that North Korea will suffer a food shortage of 125,000 tons from early October to early next March.

North Korea, plagued by food shortages, has been heavily dependent on foreign handouts to feed its 23 million people. South Korea has provided hundreds of thousands of tons of fertilizer annually since 1999.

The fertilizer aid plan was announced just before a delegation from the South left for Pyongyang for high-level reconciliation talks with the North.

South Korea's chief delegate, Unification Minister Jeong Se-Hyun, said he would use the inter-Korean talks to press North Koreans to join international talks on Pyongyang's nuclear issue.

"Inter-Korean dialogue is a useful channel to persuade North Korea to resolve the nuclear impasse," Jeong told journalists, prior to departing for Pyongyang.

The cabinet-level talks, scheduled for Oct. 14-17 in Pyongyang, will likely be overshadowed by the North's threat to make atomic bombs by using plutonium extracted from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods.
East-Asia-Intel, www.eas-asia-intel.com, October 17, 2003
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