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Korean peninsula

November 25, 2011

Seoul has sent an official to North Korea for the first time since it severed ties with Pyongyang 18 months ago. Meanwhile, a UN envoy has urged Pyongyang to end the 'inhuman and degrading' treatment of detainees.

https://p.dw.com/p/RyQd
A South Korean soldier looks at his country's armed vehicles
Relations between South and North Korea have been rather tense in the past three yearsImage: AP

The first South Korean official to visit North Korea since Seoul cut ties in May last year after accusing Pyongyang of sinking a warship will help monitor private food aid to North Korean children.

Cho Joong-Hoon, the head of the South Korean unification's ministry's humanitarian assistance department, is traveling with representatives of an NGO to ensure the food is properly distributed.

He is the first South Korean official to monitor food aid since conservative President Lee Myung-bak entered office and adopted a tougher line toward aid to North Korea, linking it to Pyongyang's progress in dismantling its nuclear program.

South Koreans watch smoke rising from South Korea's Yeonpyeong island
The North shelled South's Yeonpyeong island last year, killing four peopleImage: AP
According to a ministry spokesman, Cho will visit three places in North Korea, including a children's day care center in the northwestern city of Jongui, to make sure that 300 tons of flour aid reaches the intended recipients.

"The government has been persistent in making efforts to enhance transparency in distribution of food aid in the North," the spokesman said.

Relations between the two Koreas worsened last year when the North shelled a South Korean border island and killed four people.

Ties between Seoul and Pyongyang only eased slightly after the South allowed private food aid and some non-official cross-border visits.

According to the World Food Program, some six million North Koreans would go hungry without external food aid.

'Dismal' rights record

South Korean protester walks by a portrait of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il
The communist North is accused of grave human rights violationsImage: AP

Meanwhile, Marzuki Darusman, the UN special rapporteur on the North's rights record, has criticized Pyongyang for its "inhuman and degrading" treatment of detainees in forced labor camps. Darusman urged the North Korean authorities to end the torture of prisoners.

Speaking at the end of his week-long visit to South Korea, during which he met refugees from the North, the former Indonesian attorney-general said most of them "had undergone harsh punishments in the forced labor camps and had either witnessed or heard of torture being implemented on other inmates."

Darusman urged Pyongyang to improve its "dismal" human rights record and make changes in its penal laws, "which give rise to a plethora of abuses including torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."

Darusman said last month that up to 200,000 political prisoners are languishing in different North Korean camps.

Author: Shamil Shams (AFP, AP)

Editor: Anne Thomas

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