South Korea has proposed sending emergency relief aid to North Korea, the first such offer since ties sank into a deep freeze after the death of the North’s leader in December.
The South’s Red Cross chief sent a proposal on Monday calling for talks with North Korea on the shipment of aid, the South Korean Unification Ministry, which handles cross-border affairs, said yesterday.
Official aid from the South to the North often goes through the Red Cross as a matter of formality.
South Korea last sent such aid two years ago, although civilian groups have been allowed to ship aid to the impoverished North despite high cross-border tensions.
Unification Minister Yu Woo-ik told the South Korean parliament that Pyongyang had not yet reacted to the offer.
“We have conveyed our willingness to help North Korea’s efforts to overcome flood damage,” he said, adding a drought this spring and floods this summer appeared to have brought severe damage to the North.
Yu’s comment came a day after his ministry approved a request from Christian relief group World Vision to send 500 tonnes of flour to North Korean flood victims next week.
Pyongyang’s state news agency said earlier that floods in June and July left 569 people dead or missing and washed away or inundated 65,280 hectares of cropland.
A strong typhoon which hit the Korean peninsula last Tuesday killed 48 people and damaged at least 50,000 hectares of farmland in the North, it said on Monday.
North Korea suffers chronic food shortages, with the situation continually exacerbated by floods, droughts and mismanagement. A famine in the mid to late 1990s killed hundreds of thousands.
Last year, the North rejected the South’s proposal to provide flood aid saying the offer did not include cement or food staples like rice. Seoul fears rice and cement could be diverted to the North’s military.
Relations remain frosty and there has been no substantial cross-border dialogue since North Korean leader Kim Jong-un came to power.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of