Asia-Pacific

S Korea approves to send powdered milk to DPRK

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-06-09 20:31

SEOUL - South Korea has approved to send two shipments of powered milk to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Seoul's Ministry of Unification said on Wednesday.

The shipments of baby food for infants, sponsored by two civic groups, will be sent as humanitarian aid to the DPRK, the first since Seoul announced to take punitive measures against the DPRK for the sinking of the warship Cheonan.

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The some $320,000 worth of powered milk and other items will be dispatched to North Hamgyeong Province and Pyongyang late this month, ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said in a press briefing.

Lee added that the ministry also approved some 34 shipments of shoes and clothes produced in the joint industrial complex in Kaesong, a border city in the DPRK, to the South. ?

Those productions were all manufactured with materials sent from the South before Seoul announced to take "firm countermeasures" against Pyongyang, she added.

South Korea last month unveiled a series of punitive measures against the DPRK over the Cheonan incident, including downsizing the operation of the Kaesong park, suspending all inter-Korean cooperation apart from the Kaesong program, and relaunching psychological warfare against Pyongyang, after it made public the outcome of investigations over the Cheonan incident made by a multinational team, which said the warship that went into waters near a tense maritime border with the DPRK in March was torpedoed by the DPRK. But the DPRK denied its involvement.