KEY POINTS:
SEOUL - North Korea may be facing UN sanctions for the nuclear test it conducted last month, but goats and milk cows are still coming across the border.
Private aid from South Korean groups in the form of medicine, food and livestock has increased steadily in recent years. Donors see it as a way of giving direct help to the people of the impoverished Stalinist state.
"The contributions from South Korean civic and religious groups are not that big, but they are very practical," said Lee Keum-soon, a senior research fellow for South's Korea Institute for National Unification.
"Many South Koreans see it as their responsibility to keep North Koreans alive."
Civic and religious group leaders say many South Koreans are angry with the leaders of the communist North for the nuclear test and July's missile launches, but their sense of fraternity with its citizens is undiminished.
In 1999, nine civic groups from the South gave aid to North Korea valued at US$250,000 ($378,000). Last year, 54 groups gave aid worth $US76.7 million ($116 million).
This year, at least 66 organisations are giving aid.
The groups include the One Korea Buddhist Movement, which is helping set up a noodle factory in the north, the Korea Campus Crusade for Christ, which provides dairy cows, and Green Doctors, which sends medical supplies.
"After the UN sanctions, some civic organisations have said it's a bit more difficult to collect money from people," said a Unification Ministry official. "However, their support for the North is on an ever-increasing path."
North Korea, which routinely extols the idea of one Korean nation supporting itself, usually allows South Korean civic aid donors access to the secretive state.
The South Korean Government, which sends 500,000 tonnes of rice a year to North Korea, has been criticised for not having enough monitoring checks to make sure its aid is not diverted.
But the UN World Food Programme, which does have an extensive monitoring system, has difficulty finding donors.
North Korea has been roundly criticised for spending huge amounts on its nuclear and weapons programmes instead of on food for its people.
Up to 2.5 million people - 10 per cent of its population - starved to death in the 1990s, the World Food Programme says.
When South Korea suspended its government rice aid after the missile tests, civic groups kept the food flowing.
"If we do not send aid once a month, children are going to go hungry," said Yoon Hwan-cheol, an official with Sharing Campaign, one of the biggest private donors to the North.
- REUTERS
