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Updated Wednesday, September 8, 2010 10:03 pm TWN, By Hyung-jin Kim, AP



	A South Korean soldier walks by a huge poster depicting North Korea's food crisis at the Korea War Memorial Museum in Seoul, Tuesday, Sept. 7. North Korea requested a shipment of rice, cement and heavy equipment days after South Korea offered relief aid to its communist neighbor to help it recover from recent flooding, the Unification Ministry said Tuesday. (AP) Enlarge Photo

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North Korea asks South for flood aid despite tensions

Red Cross official Kim Sung-keun said the bulk of the aid, if sent, would be financed by the South Korean government.

The aid offer came despite continuing tension over March's deadly sinking. In retaliation, South Korea cut off nearly all trade with North Korea but has continued shipping humanitarian aid for the vulnerable, including infants and pregnant women.

On Monday, North Korea also announced it would free a seven-man crew of a South Korean fishing boat seized a month ago in its waters, calling it a “humanitarian” gesture.

An analyst said the North is believed to have decided to release the fishermen in return for South Korea's aid offer.

“I believe this is the results of informal contacts between the two Koreas,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the Seoul-based University of North Korean Studies. The latest development may foster a “positive atmosphere” for the resumption of formal talks between the two Koreas, he said.

The Unification Ministry, however, said Tuesday there were no negotiations with North Korea over the fishermen. Spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said that South Korea's aid offer and the fishermen's release were “separate matters.”

The four South Korean and three Chinese fisherman and their vessel would be enter the South at the Koreas' eastern sea border on Tuesday afternoon, officials said. They were taken into custody on Aug. 8 and accused of fishing illegally in North Korea's exclusive economic zone off the east coast of the divided Korean peninsula.

Earlier Tuesday, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said that he hopes to improve relations with the North.

“The Red Cross is preparing to make a humanitarian aid and that is one step forward” in inter-Korean ties, Lee told ruling party leaders during a regular meeting, according to Lee's office.

North Korea has relied on foreign food aid since natural disasters and mismanagement devastated its economy in the mid-1990s and led to a famine estimated to have killed as many as 2 million people.

The two Koreas officially remain at war because their 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. Their ties turned sour after Lee took office in 2008 with a tough policy on the North.

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