The United States is unlikely to provide humanitarian food aid to North Korea this year as it believes food shortages in the communist state have been eased slightly by the autumn harvest, a Seoul official said.

The U.S. has been considering an appeal from North Korea for food aid and sent a team in May of this year to assess the needs of the impoverished country, but is withholding its decision because of monitoring concerns.

“The U.S. expects North Korea’s harvest volume to increase somewhat this year,” said the foreign ministry official, who recently visited the U.S. and met senior officials, including Robert King, Washington’s special envoy on the North’s human rights.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there was “no progress” in discussions between U.S. officials on whether to resume humanitarian food aid to the North.

“As North Korea harvested crops, there is no need for emergency food assistance for the time being,” the official said.

South Korea and the U.S. have been under pressure to resume food aid to North Korea, particularly after the European Union announced plans to provide the North with emergency food aid worth 10 million euros ($13.53 million).

South Korea suspended its annual aid of 400,000 tons of rice in 2008 when conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office with a policy of linking assistance to progress in efforts to get North Korea to give up its nuclear programs.

Inter-Korean relations plunged to one of their lowest levels last year, following the North’s two deadly military attacks on the South.

Seoul is also known to have reservations about Washington’s move to resume food aid to Pyongyang, which has not shown any clear sign of keeping its earlier denuclearization commitment.

South Korean officials said they could give large-scale aid to North Korea if Pyongyang demonstrated its commitment to denuclearization, a key precondition set by both Seoul and Washington for the resumption of long-stalled six-party talks on ending Pyongyang’s nuclear programs. (Yonhap News)