Foreign Aid enters NK.

[Gandalf]

[quote= "Reuters"]SEOUL/DANDONG, China (Reuters) - China sent supplies across the border into North Korea on Sunday in the first aid shipment to the secretive communist state since a train blast killed 154 people and injured hundreds more.

South Korea decided to send goods worth $1 million as soon as possible and also offer medical teams to impoverished North Korea, whose medical system is rudimentary at best, to help treat those hurt in Thursday's apocalyptic fireball explosion.

China's official Xinhua news agency said the first convoy of 11 trucks crossed into North Korea on Sunday.

"The goods, part of the offer China made after Thursday's devastating explosion of two trains at Ryongchon station, include 2,000 carpets, 300 tents, food items and other relief materials," it said in a report from the North Korean border city of Sinuiju.

Some supplies were taken to the site from Pyongyang when aid workers and diplomats visited on Saturday.

Photographs taken by Chinese state media and aid agencies during that visit showed grim-faced North Koreans picking through buildings flattened in the blast, which devastated Ryongchon near the border with China and showered debris for miles just hours after leader Kim Jong-il had passed through by train.

Some photographs showed workers clearing the area with old-fashioned tractors. One picture showed a crater carved out of the former railway station. Another showed two girls in red and blue tracksuits carting wood to rebuild their damaged home. Another image showed the remains of a school.

The South Korean government will send blankets, clothes, instant noodles and water as soon as possible by road, the Unification Ministry said after officials met on Sunday.

"If road delivery is inappropriate, the government will consider sending supplies on a Red Cross medical supply ship, which is due to depart on April 28 from Inchon to Nampo," it added, referring to ports in South and North Korea respectively.

The Korean peninsula is bisected by the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone and there is rarely movement through it.

Japanese media reports said Japan was also considering providing humanitarian aid despite a long-running row with Pyongyang over abducted Japanese.

Red Cross officials in Beijing told Reuters there was no update to the toll, which was far lower than initial South Korean media suggested in reports based on Chinese sources and witnesses. Reporting on the blast has been hampered by the closed nature of North Korea, where information is strictly controlled.

But North Korea has started reporting to its own people on the blast, South Korea's YTN television said on Sunday.

POOR INFRASTRUCTURE

YTN showed part of a Saturday-night North Korean program in which the announcer read out a report, without casualty figures.

"Many diplomats based in the DPRK and representatives of international organizations visited the scene and donated aid supplies such as medicines, food and other staples," the North Korean announcer said. DPRK is short for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

North Korea has in the past avoided reporting on disasters at home, although aid workers and intelligence sources say there have been many accidents resulting from the country's poor infrastructure and safety standards.

The official KCNA news agency published sympathy messages Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin had sent to Kim. Both mentioned people had been killed.

North Korea's first official report on the disaster, on Saturday, blamed the incident on carelessness during the shunting of wagons loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel tanker wagons. It said the damage was "very serious."

Those who visited the site described scenes of devastation.

The blast took place about nine hours after a special armored train carrying Kim back from a trip to China had passed through Ryongchon. South Korea has said it views the blast as an accident possibly resulting from a backlog of trains rather than a botched attempt on Kim's life.

Xinhua news agency quoted North Korean official Jang Song-gun, in charge of rescue efforts, as saying 154 people had been confirmed killed, including 76 primary school children.

"It looks as though a fireball has swept through," John Sparrow, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said on Saturday.

International relief teams descended on the area and offers of aid flowed in response to a rare appeal for help.

The United States, which has bracketed North Korea with Iran and pre-war Iraq in an "axis of evil" and is the main protagonist in a standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear program, said it was willing to help with the disaster relief.

North Korea rarely reports on accidents and only belatedly sought outside aid after floods and a famine in the 1990s.

"It's very significant that they have accepted our help and that they gave us access to people who were in need of help," said World Food Program spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume. "It showed a lot of openness."

The world's worst rail disaster was in India in 1981, when at least 800 people were killed when a cyclone blew a crowded train off the track.[/quote]

It must be pretty bad if they're seeking outside help.

Could these aid programs influence any opening of NK? Or at least give a better light on what happened?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Better light? Yes. Opening NK? No. You'd need a disaster with at least two orders of magnitude more casualties.

[Sarevok]

Lets hope the aid reaches the suffering North Koreans in time and in right quantity.