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SEOUL: South Korea is to resume food assistance to North Korea next month, a news report said on Sunday, after it was suspended as part of Seoul's firmer stance with its neighbour and rival.
Seoul's Yonhap news agency quoted an unnamed ruling Grand National Party official as saying the government and the party agreed to resume food aid to the impoverished North directly, or via the UN's World Food Programme.
"There was no dissent in the government and the ruling party that food assistance for North Korea should be resumed," the official told Yonhap.
The party official said the government would decide in early October on shipment dates. Seoul has been trying to contact Pyongyang to find ways of shipping food aid directly to the North, Yonhap added.
The WFP warned in July hunger in North Korea is at its worst since the famine years of the 1990s, with five to six million people in immediate need out of a population of 23 million.
The South's unification ministry - which exclusively handles North Korean affairs, including food aid - declined to comment on Sunday.
Seoul suspended its food and other economic aid to Pyongyang after conservative President Lee Myung-Bak took office in February taking a tougher line on the communist northern neighbour.
The North has called Lee, who wants to link aid to progress in Pyongyang's nuclear disarmament, a "traitor" since then.
South Korea previously provided the North with about 400,000 tons of rice and 300,000 tons of fertiliser annually, technically in the form of a loan. - AFP/de
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