SOUTH Korea's ruling party yesterday vetoed "unprincipled" rice aid to North Korea, where the UN says some two million children face starvation.
"We should not provide aid to North Korea in an unprincipled and hasty way, but only after it has formally asked us, and shifts its (hostile) policy towards the South," the New Korea Party policy maker Mr Kim Chong Hoh said.
Mr Kim's statement came amid unease in Seoul, Tokyo and Washington that North Korea might be driven into military action by its food crisis.
Most analysts say the crunch will come in March or April, the early spring season known for centuries in the Korean peninsula as the hungry time, with supplies of stored food exhausted and the new harvest not yet in.
But South Korean newspapers say the moment of truth for Seoul is likely to come sooner, possibly this month. On Saturday, the US residential adviser Mr Anthony Lake, will arrive in Seoul for talks. In Honolulu on January 24th-25th South Korea Japan and the United States will discuss aid to the North.
Reports from Washington quote intelligence sources speaking of public executions to stave off food riots, a CIA report warning of a possible mass refugee exodus to China, and deep unease among policy makers.
One Seoul based analyst agreed, saying he feared that if food aid was not forthcoming North Korea might lash out militarily.
"If appeals to the international community fail, then (North Korea's new leader) Kim Jong II might well have to turn to the military card," the analyst said. He considered it would be political suicide for the ygunger Mr Kim, son and heir of Kim II Sung, to repudiate the economically crippling policies of his father which spawned the crisis. Mr Kim was in a very different position lb China's Mr Deng Xiaoping, who in the late 1970s was able to introduce rapid economic reform without overtly betraying the legacy of Mao Zedong.
A specialist on North Korean agriculture was less alarmed, saying North Korea's chronic food problems represented a latent crisis. Last year's floods, which wiped out some 988,000 acres of parable land, had left a "severe" malnutrition problem.
A Russian diplomat said China was quietly holding off aid until North Korea committed itself to drastic economic reform.
In Seoul, still smarting from the North's continued verbal hostility after South Korea last year provided 150,000 tonnes of free rice, officials said they would be glad to give as much as North Korea needs if it asked and if it "changes its attitude."
And civilians, while unsure of the intentions of the North's million strong army, send cash donations through a Red Cross humanitarian window left open by the government.