UN urges South Korea to offer food aid to North

SEOUL: The U.N. food agency has asked South Korea to provide emergency aid to North Korea to help avert a food crisis, an official said Thursday.

The World Food Program earlier this week officially requested that Seoul give US$60 million to the agency for aid to the 6.2 million most vulnerable North Koreans, Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon told reporters at a daily briefing.

Kim said his country will not tie the issue to the North's nuclear programs, but said South Korean public opinion is a consideration in deciding whether to meet the request.

South Korea has been a key aid donor to its impoverished northern neighbor, but public sentiment has worsened following the shooting death last month of a South Korean tourist at a North Korean mountain resort.

North Korea had previously rejected South Korean offers of direct food aid in apparent anger toward the new South Korean government's harder line policy on the North.

The food agency warned last month that millions of North Koreans were at risk from hunger and the food shortage threatened to cause widespread malnutrition.

North Korea has relied on aid to help feed its 23 million people since natural disasters and mismanagement devastated its economy in the mid-1990s. Famine is believed to have killed 2 million people.