South Korea Sending Food Aid To North Korea

South Korea began shipping 50,000 tons of food to hungry North Koreans on Thursday, setting aside concerns the Communist country’s army may grab some of the food for itself.

Children and starving adults were to be among the first recipients of the 2,000 tons of flour, 4 tons of powdered milk and 70,200 gallons of cooking oil that left Inchon, a port west of Seoul, in a ship Thursday.

Trains and ships will bring in more loads to complete the delivery of 50,000 tons of food, mostly corn, by the end of September. The food can feed 740,000 North Koreans, or about 3 percent of the population, before this year’s harvest in October, the officials said.

Flooding, bad harvests and years of agricultural mismanagement have pushed North Korea to the brink of famine. Drought threatens this year’s harvest.

A U.S. congressional group expressed concern Wednesday about the possibility some food aid may have been siphoned off by the military and government elite.

Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said such diversion could occur under the North’s government-run food distribution system. Harman and other members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence spoke with reporters in Seoul after making a three-day visit to North Korea.

In a statement Thursday, the Seoul government said it could not “help but raise concern about the transparency of the process in which food aid is distributed in the North,” and called for a stop to any diversions.

International Red Cross officials and U.N. World Food Program representatives are working with North Korean authorities to ensure that the food reaches children and other North Koreans suffering food shortages.

But they have complained North Korea is not allowing enough monitors to check distribution and measure the full extent of the food crisis.

U.N. agencies said the North needs 800,000 tons of foreign food aid before the harvest to avert widespread famine.