S Korea to offer $13.3 mln aid to DPRK via international agencies

South Korea will offer 13.3 million US dollars of humanitarian aid to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) through international agencies, Seoul's Unification Ministry said Monday.

Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Eui-do told a routine press briefing that the ministry will tap the Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund for aid to projects of the World Food Program (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) for health services of mothers and children in the DPRK.

The government will provide 7 million US dollars for the WFP to improve nutritional assistance to pregnant women and children in the DPRK, while offering 6.3 million US dollars to the WHO for essential medicine, enhanced clinics and the training of health manpower there.

It will be the first time since 2007 that South Korea offers assistance to the DPRK through the WFP. In 2007, the country provided 20 million US dollars for the agency. Last year, Seoul gave 6.05 million US dollars to the WHO for aid to Pyongyang.

The new aid came as a follow-up measure on President Park Geun- hye's signature "Dresden Initiative." When Park traveled to the former East German city of Dresden in March, she made the three- point initiative to the DPRK such as humanitarian aid to mothers and children in the DPRK, infrastructure development and broader inter-Korean exchange in non-political areas.

The spokesman said the assistance to the WFP and the WHO "is closely related with" the package project for the DPRK's mothers and children seen in the Dresden Initiative.