For Lee Ha-neul, a 42-year-old defector who fled to the South in 2009, Seoul’s announcement on Wednesday made her think of the parents and brothers she had left behind.

“Many defectors who have come to the South with all their family members tend to object to any kind of aid to the North, while those who still have their relatives in the North welcome it,” she said.

“You can’t turn rice into nuclear weapons. When food aid from outside comes to the North, food prices at private markets there fall immediately, which is good for everyone there.”

Xi’s visit will give Kim political capital – and tonnes of food

Lee used to live in Hamhung, North Korea’s second-largest city, and came from a relatively well-to-do background. That was until the beginning of four years of famine that beset the country from 1994, which saw the government cut grain rations drastically and black market food prices skyrocket.

“People began to die here and there” Lee said, describing how the elderly were the first to starve, followed by newborn babies whose mothers could no longer breastfeed them. It is not known how many people died in the famine, but estimates range from 240,000 to 3.5 million.

To survive, families would mix what little flour or corn they had with anything else they had to hand, from grass to rotten potatoes, Lee said.

In August 1995, North Korea was forced to make an official request for humanitarian aid and the international community responded with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of grain, much of which was provided by the South.

Lee said she still remembers the look on her mother’s face that year when the family received their first grain ration in months. It consisted of 3kg of rice and 7kg of corn.

“We immediately knew the rice was from the South. It was well-polished without containing any rice bran or dust,” she said.

The grains came in sturdy sacks with the South’s official name printed on one side in Korean and “40kg rice” printed on the other. These sacks were never handed out and authorities banned their use “but many people used them anyway after smudging the printed words or turning the sacks inside out as they were quite useful as containers to carry things”, Lee said.

The South went on to send hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food aid to the North, especially after the historic inter-Korean summit of 2000 – the first since the Korean war.

But in 2008, newly elected conservative president Lee Myung-bak pulled the plug on such exchanges amid mounting tension over the North’s nuclear development.

Wednesday’s announcement marks the first time South Korea has said it will provide rice to the North since 2010, when Seoul sent 5,000 tonnes to help the country recovery from flooding.

It is also the South’s largest donation since 2008, the World Food Programme said in a statement, and is expected to help support between 1.5 million and 2 million children, pregnant women and nursing mothers.

Last month, official media in North Korea said the country was experiencing its worst drought in over a century and the World Food Programme expressed “very serious concerns” about the situation.

The North – which is subject to international sanctions over its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programmes – has long struggled to feed itself and suffers chronic food shortages.

North Korea cuts food rations to 300 grammes a day after worst harvest

But sending humanitarian aid to Pyongyang is a contentious issue for many in the South, with the North frequently accused of prioritising military spending over adequately providing for its people.

Last month, pollsters Gallup Korea found that 47 per cent of respondents to a survey disapproved of sending aid, while 44 per cent were in favour.

Last week, South Korea sent US$8 million to the World Food Programme and the United Nations Children’s Fund for programmes providing medical and nutritional aid for North Korean children and pregnant women.

Additional reporting by Reuters and Associated Press

Connect with us on Twitter and Facebook