{"id":1606,"date":"2013-03-23T01:16:10","date_gmt":"2013-03-23T01:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/up\/wordpress\/2013\/03\/23\/s-korea-approves-first-n-korea-aid-since-rocket-launch\/"},"modified":"2022-10-29T16:31:43","modified_gmt":"2022-10-29T15:31:43","slug":"s-korea-approves-first-n-korea-aid-since-rocket-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/s-korea-approves-first-n-korea-aid-since-rocket-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"S. Korea approves first N. Korea aid since rocket launch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>South Korea on Friday approved the first shipment of humanitarian aid to North Korea since military tensions spiralled after Pyongyang&#8217;s rocket launch in December and nuclear test last month. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eugene Bell, a South Korean charity, was given the green light to ship tuberculosis medicine worth 678 million won ($605,000) for its medical service programme in the North, the unification ministry said.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>But ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-Suk stressed the decision should not be seen as a conciliatory gesture at a time of highly-elevated military tensions on the Korean peninsula.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>&#8220;The approval is strictly for humanitarian purposes and should not be read as a message to condone North Korea&#8217;s recent provocations,&#8221; he said.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>In recent weeks, North Korea has made multiple threats of an armed response to joint South Korea-US military drills and to United Nations sanctions imposed after its February nuclear test. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p><strong>South Korea halted government food and fertiliser shipments to the North after former president Lee Myung-Bak&#8217;s conservative administration took office in early 2008.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Humanitarian aid by civic groups was allowed to continue, with the most recent shipment taking place in November last year.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>South Korea&#8217;s new President Park Geun-Hye had campaigned on a promise of greater engagement with Pyongyang and held out the possibility of resuming official aid.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>But the rocket launch and nuclear test, and the UN sanctions that followed both events, have put any rapprochement plans on the back burner.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The North suffers chronic food shortages, with the situation exacerbated by floods, droughts and mismanagement. Hundreds of thousands died during a famine in the mid- to late-1990s.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Korea on Friday approved the first shipment of humanitarian aid to North Korea since&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,21],"tags":[1900,1951,242,406,1954,1897,1953,1950,1952],"class_list":["post-1606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-ynews3","tag-aid","tag-approves","tag-first","tag-korea","tag-launch","tag-n-korea","tag-rocket","tag-s","tag-since"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3317,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions\/3317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}