THE CZECH REPUBLIC has offered a lukewarm response to a North Korean proposal which would see the Asian state repay its Cold War debts in ginseng roots instead of cash.

The Czechs have been holding talks with the poverty-stricken Asian country to pay back €7.6m it borrowed from the former Czechoslovakia, which lent the money in the form of military assets in the late 1980s while part of the Eurasian communist bloc allied to Pyong-yang.

Czechoslovakia lent trams, trucks and other transport facilities to the country.

Now, North Korea has come up with an unusual method of repayment: it wishes to repay the debt by offering the Czechs repayment with ginseng, more commonly used as an aphrodisiac and a herbal remedy for erectile dysfunction.

What’s more, the terms of the Korean proposal would only see 5% – or €380,000 – of the debt repaid, with the other 95% written off.

Unsurprisingly – given the €7.2m loss it would shoulder, as well as the implicit admission that the Czechs would require the use of such an aphrodisiac – Prague has not responded particularly kindly to the Korean offer. Furthermore, the amount being offered is 200 times the amount the Czechs consume each year.

North Korea has gotten by on food handouts from neighbouring countries since the 1990s when a series of natural disasters wiped out much of the country’s agricultural production.

It had previously been fed by the Soviet Union but such aid stopped when the union dissolved in 1991.

The country still, however, manages to find the money to fund technology such as Kim Jong-il’s self-invented invisible mobile phones, and nuclear weapons with the ability to strike mainland America.