SOUTH KOREA: South Korea prepares to send aid goods to North Korean flood victims

South Korean Red Cross volunteers begin packing aid supplies into boxes, which will be sent to flood-stricken North Korea. The Korean National Red Cross began on Wednesday (August 22) to pack emergency aid goods, which will be sent to flood-stricken North Korea. Aid workers in Seoul packed processed food, rice, cooking utensils and blankets into about 160 boxes and loaded them on to two trucks. Other Red Cross chapters across the country will also be preparing emergency kits, which altogether will be delivered to North Korea on Thursday (August 23) by trucks going through the Demilitarised zone (DMZ), a heavily fortified border that divides North and South Korea. "North Korea's floods have left many dead and about 300,000 people homeless. The Korean National Red Cross is preparing to deliver the aid goods to them," said Red Cross employee Kim Jae-jeong. Floods in the impoverished North have destroyed thousands of buildings and wiped out farm land in a country that battles chronic food shortages, international relief agencies said. North Korea's official media has said more than 11 percent of its paddy and maize fields were submerged, buried or swept away as heavy rains saturated the lower half of the country. The secretive state took the unusual step of showing on its official state television, footage of flooding in the capital Pyongyang, and other parts of the country. Heavy rains that pelted the country earlier this month gave way to clear skies this week, bringing some relief. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week at least 221 people had been killed and 80 were missing after some of the worst flooding to hit the communist North. The U.N. World Food Programme said on Tuesday (August 21) it would immediately begin the distribution of emergency food rations. It reached an agreement with the North Korean government to provide food to 215,000 people affected by the flooding over three months. The emergency flood response will cost between $5 million to $6 million according to preliminary estimates, it said in a statement, and called on international donors to help. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Monday (August 20) it has launched an emergency appeal for flood relief, seeking $5.5 million to help 3.7 million North Koreans affected by the floods. The two Koreas delayed until October what will be the second summit of their leaders due to the flooding. The meeting had been set for later this month. A famine in the mid-to-late-1990s is estimated to have killed as much as 10 percent of North Korea's 23 million population.

ITN Source | August 22, 2007

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