U.S. food aid to arrive in N. Korea this month: report

SEOUL, Dec. 18 (Yonhap) -- The latest U.S. shipment of food aid to Pyongyang will arrive in North Korea this month after a four-month lull, the Voice of America said Thursday, quoting a Washington official.

Washington in May pledged 500,000 tons of food aid to Pyongyang over the span of
a year, and about a quarter of it has been delivered so far.
Some 21,000 tons of corn, the sixth batch of aid pledged to the North, is
scheduled to arrive by the end of December and will be distributed to the North
Korean people through the World Food Program (WFP), an unidentified U.S. State
Department official said on the U.S. radio program.
The U.N. agency could not immediately confirm the report, but was positive that
aid from the U.S. will continue.
"All I can tell you is that we are optimistic that the food aid will continue to
be provided by the United States," the WFP spokesman in Bangkok, Paul Risley,
told Yonhap News Agency over the telephone.
The upcoming shipment will be the first since August. The U.S. State Department
official did not elaborate on the reason for the four-month lull, but said
Washington has continued cooperation with Pyongyang to provide food relief as
agreed.
The new batch of aid will be exclusively distributed through the WFP rather than
non-governmental U.S. organizations, the official said.
Washington has said it will deliver 400,000 tons of aid through the WFP, and the
rest of the 100,000 tons through U.S. NGOs.
The WFP estimates that North Korea urgently needs food aid worth US$346 million
to help to help some 5.6 million North Koreans -- nearly a quarter of the
country's population -- get through the new year.