Posted on 02/06/2005 3:13:16 PM PST by Cornpone
South Korea has been agonizing over a recent request from North Korea for an ``unusually’’ large volume of fertilizer aid, officials in Seoul said Sunday.
According to the Korean National Red Cross (KNRC), the North’s Red Cross sent a telephone message on Jan. 13 asking for 500,000 tons of fertilizer for this spring.
It marks a large increase from the 300,000 tons that Seoul has shipped to the North every year _ 200,000 tons in the spring and the remaining 100,000 tons in the autumn _ since the historic 2000 inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang, with the exception of 2001.
South Korea has so far provided some 1.55 million tons of free fertilizer to the North, which has been relying on outside assistance since 1995 to help feed its 24 million people.
``Annual fertilizer aid toward the North has never exceeded 300,000 tons,’’ a KNRC executive told South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency. ``The one-time request for 500,000 tons, valued at about 140 billion won ($130 million), is seen as quite exceptional.’’
The requested volume represents about 40 percent of the total annual fertilizer consumption in the poverty-stricken North, according to the Korean Rural Economic Institute.
Kwon Tae-jin, an analyst in charge of the North’s agricultural economy at the research institute, said North Korea seems to have asked for the large-scale aid at a time when it needs more fertilizer but knows it cannot expect enough international assistance.
A government official hinted that South Korea has been agonizing over the North’s request for more than three weeks, not knowing how to respond to the exceptional call.
In the meantime, South Korea sent 20,000 tons of briquettes and 10,000 heaters to the North Korean border city of Kaesong, where an inter-Korean industrial complex is being built.
Officials at the Unification Ministry said 180 tons of briquettes and 400 heaters were sent in nine 25-ton trucks to Kaesong on Saturday. They said the same amount of aid will be sent to the border city on Monday and after the Lunar New Year’s holiday (Feb. 8-10) on a daily basis to ensure the aid reaches the North before winter ends.
The aid comes after Pyongyang’s request to resume South Korea’s planned provision of 20,000 tons of briquettes to Kaesong residents. North Korea asked the South last month to postpone the aid without a clear explanation.
South Korea is building the pilot industrial park for garment and other labor-intensive South Korean businesses which want to capitalize on the North’s cheap labor. North Korea has been suffering acute food and energy shortages since the late 1990s.
There'll always be a market for slave labor, I guess. At least, this sort of thing helps insure there will be.
Follow any dem BS artist and you will collect that much in any 24 hour period.
Souns like a bulls*** story to me.
Seriously, though, why would North Korea need ANFO bombs? They have a real military--and probably nukes.
"Seriously, though, why would North Korea need ANFO bombs? They have a real military--and probably nukes."
I agree. Besides, if they are really concerned about fertillizer being used to make a "bomb", then send only the diluted stuff they generally sell to the American public. I assume they are talking about Ammonium Nitrate?
I say deliver it.....with detonator caps in place and the timer set in motion!
My guess is the opium poppys are not yielding to good...
It's widely known that Kim is trying to develop a warhead capable of delivering 500,000 tons of fertilizer. He's also trying to grow nuclear power plants.
Couldn't South Korea just back up a million or so cows up to the border? I suppose if keep them on a diet of baked beans for a period prior to the manure delivery the North might be brought to their knees!
I am full of ideas like this I'd like to share with North Koreans and liberals.
Other choices come later. People flocked to dirty,dangerous 19th century factories because they believed it was still better than starving in the pre-welfare/socialist age.
What are all the sweatshop people who have NO job to buy food supposed to do after righteous indignation shut down those South American/Asian?Caribbean factories ?
Ideally, businesses would ALL insure healthy working conditions, etc.
But passing laws and edicts won't change physics,natural economics,or the human heart. We can try to curtail greed by social pressure, but I note that the Hollywood types leading the socialist chorus are not ashamed to demand MILLIONS of dollars for their acting "jobs".
Oh, please, this will just help ensure little kim's survival, by creating an apparently addicting need.
The more people in a closed society who get even a glimpse of how good life is outside that society, the sooner it will fall. And it is much easier and cheaper than directly attacking them, since that will "prove" what the fearless leader has been telling them about all outsiders being enemies.
Like china? Right...These people aren't free to choose to work for you or not! This is a reprieve for lil kim. They have no bigger enemy than their own govt. and they know it!
I was thinking more like eastern Europe....or DID we invade and nobody told me?
You think cheap labor is why the berlin wall fell? ??Those people wanted freedom, not slave wages.
Your thoughts on #11-16, please? Are we both wrong? Thanks.
No,I think a taste of/glimpse of a better life causes people to work towards that goal. You usually have to walk before you can run.
By the way, don't the socialists of the world,if not those in the U.S., have a million tons of BS they could send to North Korea?
They need to blow up some more mountains. Why blow up mountains? Peter Jennings may have the answer on his UFO special.
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