The South Korean Red Cross offered Friday to send starving North Koreans 40,000 tons of grain - twice the amount it has sent the North in two years of severe food shortages.
North Korea accepted the aid after two hours of talks, said South Korean Red Cross secretary general Lee Byung-woong. He said negotiations will resume Saturday to resolve disputes on how the food will be sent and who will get it.An agreement would conclude the first successful negotiations in five years between the Red Cross groups, which are both closely aligned with their hostile governments.
The North Korean delegation retreated without comment to the North's fortress-like embassy compound in Beijing.
The 40,000 tons of grains, worth $8 million, would feed 500,000 people for half a year - about 31/2 times the number the International Red Cross is now caring for.
It would be twice what the South Korean Red Cross has sent the North in the past two years of near-famine, according to Red Cross figures.
U.N. aid organizations estimate that 4.7 million North Koreans - about a fifth of the population - are in desperate need of food. Massive deliveries are needed in the months before the fall harvest to prevent widespread famine.
Talks in Beijing three weeks ago broke down after two days when South Korea could not specify how much aid it would deliver and when.
Friday's session opened in a friendly atmosphere. Lee, the South Korean Red Cross official, and his North Korean counterpart, Paek Yong Ho, exchanged pleasantries and shook hands across the table for reporters.
Afterward, Lee told reporters that all of the food aid could be delivered by the end of July and more could be sent after that if private donors agree to give more.
Although Lee played down disagreements as "procedural matters," South Korea is still seeking terms Pyongyang has previously rejected.
South Korea wants some of the aid shipped through Panmunjom - the only land route through the demilitarized zone that divides the North and the South - and in packages bearing the names of the donors.
Aid sent across the demilitarized zone in marked packages would be hard to conceal and further show North Koreans their secretive, Stalinist government, which preaches self-reliance, can no longer provide for them.