Coats for children in Korea are loaded onto a truck for shipment to Richmond, Va.

The coats were not sent by Christmas as planned because of "complications in shipping the coats," according to a story by Baptist Press (BP). The story said there were "difficulties in arranging for a cargo plane to carry the coats to North Korea" that delayed the departure date until Jan. 12.

IMB officials said the delay was caused by restrictions on the types of planes that North Korean officials will allow to land in their country. IMB officials chartered a Russian cargo plane that was acceptable to North Korea.

The plane, which is reported to be among the largest of its kind, was not available until Jan. 12, according to IMB officials.

"It was purely logistics that kept the coats from getting there by Christmas," said Mark Kelly, an IMB spokesman. Initially, IMB officials said they planned to send about 100,000 coats to North Korea by Christmas and about 80,000 more after the holidays.

IMB leaders sent out word of the need for coats in late November. N.C. Baptist responded by collecting about 16 percent of about 40,000 coats that were collected across the nation. Some churches made special trips to Cary to get the coats to the Baptist Building before the Dec. 12 deadline. Baptist State Convention officials had to rent two trucks to carry the coats to the IMB in Virginia on Dec. 13.

The BP story said leaders at the IMB had asked churches to continue collecting coats through Dec. 29 so the agency can honor a North Korean request for 180,000 heavy coats to protect children from that country's bitter winter weather.

Famine in North Korea for three years has nearly doubled death rates among children under 5, international aid workers said.

Thousands of children whose homes were destroyed by floods earlier this year are left without adequate protection from winter temperatures that can reach as low as 4 below zero.

North Korean officials, fearing children in several provinces will die this winter, asked Southern Baptists to collect coats.

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Tar Heel Baptists donate 6,500 coats for North Korean Chidren: Dec. 20, 1997 Biblical Recorder

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