Overseas Koreans have begun fund-raising campaigns to help victims of last week's blast in North Korea's border town of Ryongchon.
Associations of ethnic Korean groups in the United States and Japan launched their own relief campaigns on Monday.
An official at one association in Japan said it is conducting the fundraising campaign jointly with a pro-North Korean group in the country ... the first in its history.
Similar groups in New Zealand and the Philippines have also expressed their sympathies and intentions of running similar aid drives.