Seoul to review aid after US drops North Korea from terror list

13/10/2008 20:13:58

South Korea hopes a US decision to drop North Korea from a terrorism blacklist will improve Seoul's own chilly relations with the communist state.

Inter-Korean ties have been frigid since conservative President Lee Myung-Bak took office in February and promised to take a firmer line with the hardline North.

Seoul is now considering a shift in policy, including on the issue of providing food and steel.

Steel shipments to the North, in return for a nuclear shutdown, were delayed because of fears that the six-nation disarmament pact was in danger of disintegrating.

But with Pyongyang promising to resume disabling its plutonium-producing nuclear plants and readmit UN inspectors in response to the US concession, Seoul says it will review its aid to the North.

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