North Korea Demanding More Aid

The aid that South Korea is giving to North Korea is now reaching the point of ridiculousness which is evident by this latest request:

North Korea at a meeting of the Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation Committee on Friday asked the South to provide it with raw materials for 60 million pairs of shoes, 2 million formal suits (30,000 tons) and 200 million bars of soap (20,000 tons). That is enough to wash and dress the North’s entire population of 23 million. In return, Pyongyang proposes to let us mine its underground resources and take minerals — not much of a deal, since Seoul has to supply all the mining and transport equipment.

So it really is a demand for aid, and a preposterous and potentially bottomless one. The rice and fertilizer the South supplied this year alone are worth over W1.4 trillion (US$1.4 billion), and like the rice, once you start giving the clothes and shoes, you have to keep giving them year after year. Having handed the responsibility of feeding its people to the South, North Korea now also wants us to clothe them, and if anything is to come of the nuclear arms negotiations, we have to supply their electricity. Maybe next time they will ask us to build their houses.

Maybe next time they won’t just ask for houses but a Hyundai for everyone in Pyongyang and the military as well and offer North Korean sand in return which of course the South Koreans would have to provide the equipment to North Korea to dig up.