[USFK Forums] Report: North Korea decorates late U.S. activist [AP]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Monday, January 16, 2006

Report: North Korea decorates late U.S. activist

1/14/2006, 10:12 p.m. ET

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea has medaled the late leader of a U.S.-based aid group for his efforts to help the communist state fight hunger and poverty, a news report said.

Ellsworth Culver, co-founder of Mercy Corps, an international aid organization, was posthumously awarded a friendship medal by North Korea, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Sunday, citing a Korean community newspaper in the U.S.

Culver is the first U.S. citizen to receive a medal from North Korea, Yonhap said. The two countries, which fought in the 1950-53 Korean War, have been in a standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions since late 2002.

One of North Korea's U.N. diplomats, Han Song-ryol, delivered the medal to Culver's widow at a ceremony in Portland, where the aid group is headquartered, it said.

"The deceased is one of pioneers who made efforts achieve a new development of North Korea-U.S. relations during his life," Han was quoted as addressing the meeting.

Culver, who died in August at the age of 78, led the charity's efforts to provide food and medical supplies to North Korea. Through more than 20 visits to the communist state, Culver helped foster the agency's "extraordinary rapport with North Korean officialdom," the agency said in its Web site.

North Korea has relied on foreign food aid since disclosing in the mid-1990s that its state-run farms had collapsed after the loss of Soviet aid and decades of mismanagement. Famine is believed to have killed 2 million people.

But the communist regime has asked international aid agencies to switch to development assistance, saying harvests have improved enough to supply its needs with help from China and South Korea.

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