S. Korea (Sort of) Links Humanitarian Aid to Return of Abductees

South Korea’s president has asked North Korea to consider sending home prisoners of war and captured civilians in return for receiving humanitarian aid from Seoul.

President Lee Myung-bak said in an interview published Monday that he wouldn’t seek to link food and fertilizer aid to international efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs.

“Still, since we are sending humanitarian aid, the North should consider humanitarian measures, without any condition, on the pending issue of South Korean PoWs and 400 kidnapped fishermen,” Lee said in the interview published in the Maeil Business Newspaper.    [AP]

I strongly support South Korea’s efforts to  get its kidnapped citizens  back, and if I were a person of influence in the Korean government, I wouldn’t give the regime a single won until these people all came home.

Lee is not making a direct conditional linkage here, and I’m glad he isn’t.  The one exception I would make is humanitarian aid.  I’m not comfortable with anything that punishes North Korea’s most powerless people.  The only condition on humanitarian aid  should be transparency.  

What I hope Lee will do is make a direct conditional linkage to things like Kaesong and Kumgang  that  enrich the regime.   Another modest step would be for South  Korea to switch from giving rice to giving corn — to save money, and to provide something that’s as palatable to the poor as it is to the privileged.