SEOUL, March 25 (UPI) -- U.N. food officials will visit South Korea next week to discuss possible resumption of food aid to the North, an official source told Yonhap News Agency Friday.
Four officials of the World Food Program will arrive Monday and meet with staff of the Foreign and Unification ministries, the source, speaking anonymously, told Yonhap.
Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung confirmed the trip but said the South was not weighing new food aid and was only considering proposals by private groups "in a purely humanitarian light."
The United Nations reported Thursday that a quarter of North Korea's 24 million people are in desperate need of food and called for 470,000 tons of international aid.
Food aid to North Korea has fallen since its missile and nuclear tests and attacks on a South Korean ship and island last year.
In October, the North's Red Cross asked for 300,000 tons of rice and 500,000 tons of fertilizer from the South, which refused the request.
