Rains cause N. Korea to delay summit

A waterlogged North Korea was forced Saturday to postpone plans to hold a milestone summit with South Korea this month, an unusual admission from the secretive state that it is having trouble coping with havoc caused by this summer’s heavy rains.

The South Korean government swiftly agreed to the North’s request. Their leaders now plan to meet Oct. 2-4 in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.

The decision is an embarrassment for North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, whose regime has been forced to ask for international emergency aid to compensate for expected food shortages. The country’s official news media have acknowledged that this year’s floods have been worse than usual, saying that 11% of rice and corn fields are underwater. North Korea already relies on food aid to meet basic needs for its 23 million people.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun had been scheduled to travel from Seoul to Pyongyang on Aug. 28, making the crossing by car. But North Korea’s official news agency reported that parts of the capital were under almost 7 feet of water, with roads washed away, communication links broken and parks “buried under silt beyond recognition.”

Pyongyang also said torrential rains, which have been falling since Aug. 7, have caused extensive damage to its national railway network and coal mines. It said riverbanks were overflowing in many places and that there was extensive damage to the country’s grain-producing regions.

Officials from the U.N. World Food Program have been invited to visit the worst-hit areas.

Reliable figures on casualties are elusive. North Korea has acknowledged that “several” people have died in the flooding. The United Nations put the figure at 83, but the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said the toll was 221 killed, with 82 others missing. The aid agency estimated that 300,000 people were homeless.

On Friday, South Korea offered $7.5 million in emergency aid to its northern neighbor.

North and South Korean officials had been scrambling to put some substance into what was expected to be a largely symbolic second meeting of leaders from countries still officially at war. South Korea’s Roh has been downplaying the possibility of the summit leading to any breakthroughs, saying his aim was merely to improve cross-border economic ties that amount to more than $1 billion a year.

But many South Korean observers attribute Roh’s eagerness to meet Kim to a presidential election scheduled for December. Although the deeply unpopular Roh is barred from running again, his left-leaning, nationalist supporters hope that signs of improving North-South ties could vindicate their “sunshine policy” of engaging with Pyongyang, and perhaps give their eventual presidential candidate a badly needed boost.

Though welcoming any sign of improved relations, Roh’s critics have dismissed the summit as a political stunt. They note that the only other North-South summit, in 2000, was predicated on a $500-million secret payoff to the North that was subsequently exposed by South Korea’s media. And they ask why Roh is making a supplicant’s pilgrimage to Pyongyang, ignoring Kim’s promise at the 2000 meeting to hold the next meeting in Seoul.

Roh’s office said there had been no secret deals to facilitate this year’s meeting.

But critics worry that his eagerness to hold the summit before leaving office suggests that South Korea may be ready to offer generous new aid packages, without corresponding conditions that the money be monitored.

bruce.wallace@latimes.com