North Korean official says country needs food after floods

~ While the country refused South Korean help earlier, the official said they are now willing to accept it.

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea urgently needs food after devastating floods and is willing to accept aid from the South Korean government, a North Korean official said Friday.

North Korea earlier this week refused to accept flood relief from the South's Red Cross society, apparently in anger over Seoul's decision to suspend food aid because of the North's missile launches last month. The North's about-face underscored the seriousness of the floods, which began in mid-July.

'The issue of eating'

"The most pressing thing for now is to address the issue of eating," Kim Song Won, head of the North's Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation Committee in Dandong, China, told South Korea's Yonhap news agency. "We cannot help but suffer hunger unless the food problem is resolved at an early date."

Kim indicated the North would be willing to accept relief supplies from Seoul. "There is no reason to reject it if [the South's government] sincerely wants to help with no political intentions," he said.

The U.N. has said floods that began in mid-July killed at least 154 people and left another 127 missing. A South Korean activist group has claimed about 10,000 people were dead or missing.

The reclusive North tightly controls all information and doesn't allow free travel by the relatively few foreign aid workers in the country, making it difficult to get precise casualty figures.

Earlier Friday, South Korea said it was considering contributing to non-governmental aid shipments for the flood victims, trying to balance its decision to halt aid over the missile tests.

"We're considering participating in aid provision by civilian groups," said Yang Chang-seok, a spokesman for the Unification Ministry, which deals with inter-Korean affairs.

No change in position

Yang said a decision to indirectly provide flood relief would not represent a change in Seoul's position to withhold formal aid until the communist nation resolves concerns over its missile program.

The North's July 5 missile launches sharply escalated tensions in the divided Korean peninsula and broke Pyongyang's self-imposed moratorium on long-range missile tests.

South Korea, a key donor to the North, has said aid will resume only if Pyongyang returns to international talks on its nuclear program.

North Korea, angered by the decision, cut off all government-level exchanges with the South.

On Thursday, the South Korean aid group Join Together Society sent food, clothes and candles to the North in the first aid shipment from the South since the floods.

North Korea has relied on foreign food handouts since the mid-1990s, when famine caused by natural disasters and decades of mismanagement is believed to have killed up to 2 million people.