South Korea to Send Aid to Flood-Hit North

South Korea will send emergency aid to its poorer northern neighbour after floods left hundreds of North Koreans dead or missing, damaged thousands of buildings and may have displaced up to 300,000 people, a report said Thursday.

North Korea, which has suffered chronic food shortages for years, said floods have ravaged crops in its agricultural bread basket and left more than 11 percent of its paddy and maize fields submerged, buried or swept away.

South Korea is planning to send emergency items such as blankets, flour, instant noodles and medicine in an aid package that will be announced on Friday, the South's Yonhap news agency quoted a government official as saying.

The Unification Ministry would not confirm the report. It has said Seoul is considering aid but has yet to receive a request from the North Korean government.

Choi Soo-young, research fellow at Korea Institute for National Unification, said the crop loss is likely to deal a heavy blow to the country hit by famine in the mid to late 1990s.

Last year, North Korea produced 4.8 million tonnes of grain, and the rice crop accounted for half the total, according to the institute. International experts said even with a good harvest, North Korea still falls 1 million tonnes short of the food needed to feed its 23 million people.

"A loss of 480,000 tonnes would be big," Choi said. "North Korea will need massive aid from the South and world organisations.

"But the flooding would not push North Korea back into famine again as North's grain output has steadily grown from 2.5 million tonnes (about a decade ago)," he said.

North Korea's economy shrank by 1.1 percent in 2006 ending seven years of growth, dragged down by heavy flooding that washed away crops and severely damaged infrastructure as well as by international sanctions over a nuclear test in October, the South Korean central bank said on Thursday.

North Korea's official media has offered detailed accounts of the damage caused by the floods that have hit the southern half of the country. It said flood waters have destroyed hundreds of bridges, washed away railroads and snapped electric power lines.

The secretive North has broadcast video of the flooding on its official TV station, showing residents walking through waist-deep water in Pyongyang and troops being called out to repair the damage.

The Red Cross said it has distributed several hundred emergency kits. The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), which is one of the main international agencies in North Korea feeding its poor, has submitted an emergency aid proposal to the North and is awaiting a reply, a spokesman said.

North Korean officials who met a U.N. damage assessment team in the country said they believed that between 200,000 to 300,000 people have been displaced by the floods and are in dire need of shelter and food, said Paul Risley, a WFP spokesman in Bangkok.

Park Young-ho, an expert on North Korea at the South's Korea Institute for National Unification said Pyongyang has let the outside world know before when it needs help to manage a crisis.

"I guess the high political leadership has reached the conclusion that without getting help from the international world, it will be really difficult for them to recover from the damage caused by this flooding," Park said.