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But the government is facing mounting pressure to provide food aid for the country’s starving brethren in the communist North, where there are fears of massive famine without immediate outside relief aid.
Furthermore, a U.S. move to donate food supplies to the North in return for the recent denuclearization process has fueled concerns that South Korea may be sidelined in the nuclear and peace issues on the Korean peninsula.
In a self-made compromise, Seoul is considering providing food aid indirectly via the U.N. relief agency, but has been delaying a decision in an apparent bid to test public response at home.
"The government can send aid (to the North) through the U.N. World Food Program as it did in the past if there is a request from the body," a senior government official told reporters on Tuesday.
"But nothing is currently under consideration or being pushed for with regard to sending humanitarian aid through an international body," he said. The Foreign Ministry spokesman said the government would stick to the aid-after-request principle but did not rule out providing food through international organizations.
South Korea annually donated about 100,000 tons of corn to the North via the WFP's aid package between 2001 and 2004. Last year, it donated 32,000 tons of corn and beans through the U.N. food agency. But the amount was far short of the South's direct food aid to the North which stood at 400,000 to 500,000 tons of rice every year under the previous two liberal governments.
The South provided 100,000 tons of rice aid in 2006 when Pyongyang conducted a nuclear weapons test, despite worldwide appeals and threats of punishments. Seoul has donated 300,000 tons of fertilizer annually in additional aid.
Government officials said they are still ready to directly provide massive food and fertilizer aid only if the North makes an official request, and moves to address concerns about the fate of South Koreans held in the North against their will. The officials said a key principle of the U.N.'s humanitarian aid says aid should be given when there is a request and consent from a country in need.
But the chance seems slim for the North to make a formal aid request, given Pyongyang's fierce verbal attacks on South Korea, branding its conservative leader a "traitor" and threatening to turn everything in the South into "ashes."
Seoul's move comes amid warnings that another major famine is looming large in North Korea in the wake of massive floods and reduced international handouts with lingering nuclear threats and soaring food prices. North Korea's food crisis has already seen some people starve to death in remote rural areas where state food rations have been cut since late last year, according to a Seoul-based aid agency.
"One or two deaths were happening every day in rural areas," said Good Friends organization, believed to have extensive sources inside the communist country.
With worsening food shortages, grain prices are soaring in the North, threatening the underprivileged, mostly in the rural areas, it said. The price of rice has hiked to 3,000 North Korean won per kilogram, from 2,000 won in April, the aid agency said. A North Korean's average monthly salary is 2,000 to 3,000 won. One U.S. dollar officially equals 140 North Korean won, but one dollar buys some 3,000 North Korean won in the North's black market due to tremendous inflation.
The aid group warns about 200,000 to 300,000 people might die of starvation in two months if there are no immediate food supplies. "Much more people will die of hunger within a month if food prices keep going up without measures from the state," Han Kyong Dok, a 56-year-old farmer in the North's western Yangdok County, was quoted by Good Friends as saying.
With worsening food conditions, the North has suspended state food rations even to part of the country's loyal elite in Pyongyang. Citizens of Pyongyang, the country's showcase city, are the backbone of Kim Jong-Il's iron-fisted rule.
The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization said North Korea would be short of about 1.66 million tons of grain this year, which would be the largest deficit in about seven years.
North Korea has depended on international handouts to help feed its population of 23 million since the late 1990s, when it was hit by the famine that led to the deaths of an estimated more than 2 million people, or 10 percnet of its total population.
"North Korea could face the worst famine this summer since the food crisis in the 1990s," said Kwon Tae-jin, a senior researcher at the Korea Rural Economic Institute in Seoul.
