Word: seoul
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...year it pledged just 50,000 tons, and has yet to promise any new food aid this year. (U.S. officials complain that Pyongyang still isn't allowing adequate international monitoring to ensure food goes to the needy.) Meanwhile, South Korea, too, has been stingier with the North of late. Seoul shipped 1.2 million tons of rice to Pyongyang over the last three years, plus another 300,000 tons of corn through the WFP. This year, it hasn't sent anything. South Korean opposition lawmaker Won Hee Ryong last week accused Roh's government of using food aid as a political...
...options are limited for Washington and Seoul, they are worse still for North Koreans. During the famine of the 1990s, tens of thousands of them survived by escaping to neighboring China, with some finding their way to new lives in South Korea. In recent years, an underground "railroad" run by human-rights activists, defectors and people smugglers has ensured a steady stream of North Koreans are able to flee. A record 1,894 refugees arrived in South Korea in 2004, many brought out by family members who had already made it to the South, according to NGOs...
...last year, China and the North acted to reduce the outflow. The crackdown apparently began after 468 asylum seekers who had holed up in Vietnam were airlifted to Seoul. North Korea broke off talks with officials from the South, tightened its border controls and increased executions of those accused of people smuggling, according to NKNet, a Seoul-based NGO. China has also beefed up its border patrols, according to refugees. Last October, the Chinese government was operating half a dozen detention facilities inside military bases near the frontier and was repatriating up to 300 North Koreans every week, according...
...Only about 300 North Korean refugees made their way to South Korea in the first four months of this year, a drop of almost 40% from the same period in 2004, according to activists (Seoul stopped releasing statistics on refugees earlier this year, citing security concerns). But tighter border controls aren't the only reason fewer North Koreans are getting out. Since the airlift from Vietnam, South Korean officials have publicly discouraged organized efforts to help North Koreans leave. Seoul has also tightened screening of asylum seekers and reduced cash settlements for newly arrived defectors from...
...South Korean officials insist the new measures are aimed at protecting North Koreans from unscrupulous people smugglers. But the policy shift has once again put Washington and Seoul at cross-purposes?legislation passed by Congress last year seeks to lend more assistance to refugees. President Bush is expected in the next few weeks to name a special envoy for North Korean human rights. State Department and Congressional sources say the odds-on choice is Jay Lefkowitz, a lawyer who played a major role in shaping Bush's policy on stem-cell research...