1. The government of the Republic of Korea will offer $300,000 in humanitarian assistance to Greece, which suffered casualties and property damage from a number of fires in a mountainous area west of Athens and forests in Attica, northeast of Athens, on July 23.

° The fires, which are reported to have caused the largest number of casualties among all the post-20^th century fires in Europe, are known to have so far left 91 people dead and some 180 injured as well as about 600 homes destroyed.

2. Greece, which fought alongside the ROK in the Korean War, is, in particular, the latter country’s main cooperative partner in the sectors of shipbuilding and maritime transport. The two countries have been seeing bilateral cooperation grow further, as can be seen from the ROK Prime Minister’s official visit to Greece in October 2017. The ROK government’s humanitarian assistance to Greece is expected to help to restore stability in lives of affected residents and to achieve the recovery of affected areas.

※ Greece dispatched the fifth-largest number of soldiers -- 10,581-- among the sixteen countries that did to the ROK to fight alongside it in the Korean War, although the ROK and Greece were not in diplomatic relations with each other back then.

※ Greece, which has 16% of the world’s total commercial ships, is the world’s No. 1 maritime-transport powerhouse and the largest purchaser of Korean-built ships.

3. Going forward, the ROK government will continuously increase humanitarian assistance to countries and peoples affected by natural disasters.

* unofficial translation