The Amateur
Computerist
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/
Spring 2024 The U,S., the UN and Korea Volume 37 No. 2
Table of Contents
Articles from 2006 to 2017
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Page 1
Problem Facing the U.N.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 3
North Korea’s $25 Million and Banco Delta Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 8
Net Gives Power of the Reporter to the Netizen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 12
Behind the Blacklisting of Banco Delta Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 16
United Nations Command As Camouflage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 22
Overseas Koreans Remember 6.15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 35
U.S. Policy Toward North Korea Fails to Engage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 40
Netizens Question Cause of Cheonan Tragedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 45
Questioning Cheonan Investigation Stirs Controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 51
Security Council Acts in Accord with UN Charter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 59
U.S. Misrepresents its Role in Korean War. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 68
Send Communication to the UNSC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 71
Introduction
This issue of the Amateur Computerist is a collection of articles
written between 2006 and 2017, highlighting activities at the United
Nations about the Korean Question and the U.S. role in the ongoing di-
vision. The tension from the division remains unsolved.
Beginning over 1000 years ago, the Korean people formed them-
selves into one nation occupying the whole Korean Peninsula with a
continuous society, language and political system. In 1943, a Korean in
exile wrote that “When the ancestors of northern Europe were wandering
Page 1
in the forests, clad in skins and practicing rites, Koreans had a government
of their own and attained a high degree of civilization.” That was before
the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed in 1945 at the end of WWII to a
temporary division to facilitate the withdrawal of Japanese troops.
In March of 1946, a U.S.-Soviet Joint Commission was set up to
assist in forming a provisional Korean government. By the summer of
1947, it was clear that the Commission was failing. The U.S. brought the
“problem of Korean independence” to the UN.
In 1947 and 1948, the United States led the United Nations to play
a major role in dividing the Korean Peninsula and people into the Republic
of Korea (ROK – known as South Korea) and the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK – known as North Korea).The UN General
Assembly sent to Korea UNTCOK (United Nations Temporary Commis-
sion on Korea) with the mandate to “facilitate and expedite the attainment
of the national independence of Korea and withdrawal of occupying
forces.” But instead, UNTOCK arranged an election in the south of Korea
in May 1948. In that election all Koreans in the north and many Koreans
in the south were excluded. The U.S. military government and right wing
paramilitary groups controlled the entire election process. Most major
political parties and politicians in southern Korea opposed the elections.
There were strikes, demonstrations and protests against creating a separate
South Korea. In the run-up to the voting, the repression of this opposition
resulted in over 10,000 arrests and hundreds of deaths.
The significant aspect of the UN supported election was that it led
to an official government structure for only the southern part of Korea,
which months later the UN called the only legitimate government in
Korea, thus solidifying the division of Korea. One view of the military
conflict two years later that became known as the Korean War was that it
was a civil war to restore Korea as one country. (The details of this history
can be seen at:
.doc.)
Over the last 75 years, this division has caused many extremely
dangerous situations that the UN has been called on to deal with. The
articles gathered in this issue document a little the roles played by the U.S.
and the UN but also by netizens and the civil society around the question
of the division of Korea that was created in 1948.
Page 2
[Editor’s note: The following article appeared in Ohmynews International
on October 17, 2006]
The Problem Facing the U.N.
Can Ban Ki-moon Help Solve the
Problem With the Security Council?
by Ronda Hauben
The official selection on Oct. 13, 2006 of Ban Ki-moon of South
Korea as the new secretary general of the United Nations could not come
at a more propitious time. Why, one may ask? Hailing from the Republic
of Korea (South Korea), Ban will have before him the daunting task of
bringing the best possible contributions from the international community
to bear on many of the difficult problems that erupt in the world. Along
with his appointment to the post at the U.N. this past week, and the
congratulations from diplomats from many regions of the world at a
ceremony held at the General Assembly, was the event that took place the
following day: the imposition of article 41, chapter 7 sanctions on North
Korea by the Security Council as punishment for the test of a nuclear
device several days earlier.
Though Ban does not take office for his new position until Jan. 1,
2007, a crisis has already developed that will require the best efforts and
resources he can muster. In congratulating him on his selection, several of
the diplomats noted the great achievements of South Korea in having
transformed itself from “the status of least developed country, to an
industrialized highly developed nation” and “as the 11th largest economy
in the world” (in the words of Gambian Ambassador to the U.N. Crispin
Grey-Johnson). Speaking about Ban, Grey-Johnson, who is chairman of
the African regional group at the U.N., “the developments in his own
region of the world call for wisdom and cautious diplomacy” in order to
be able to “mediate this very complex security situation that is now
unfolding in the Korean Peninsula.”
In his acceptance speech to the General Assembly upon his
appointment as the eighth secretary general of the U.N., Ban acknowl-
Page 3
edged that he was following “in a line of remarkable leaders.” That “each
of the men in his own way, came on board at the U.N. at a critical juncture
in the organization’s history.” That “each wondered what the coming years
would require as they took over the leadership role of the preeminent
international organization.”
The secretary general elect expressed his respect for the role played
by the current secretary general, Kofi Annan, and promised to build on his
legacy. Explaining the need to hear the views and concerns of all the
member nations of the U.N., Ban pledged to consult widely in his
preparations for assuming his new position. “I will listen attentively to
your concerns, expectations and admonitions,” he promised the 192
member states.
Congratulating Ban, South African Ambassador to the U.N.
Dumisani Kumalo proposed that in order for the secretary general elect to
be able to act in the interest of the entire membership, he will need to
“listen to the views of each and every member state.”
How the future secretary general can help to solve the problems that
come before the U.N. is not only a critical question for the international
community, but also a critical task in the face of the increased tension
being experienced on the Korean Peninsula.
While several of the speeches at the General Assembly ceremony
spoke to the need for wide ranging consultations and discussions in order
to diffuse tensions and determine how to solve difficult problems, recent
actions at the Security Council the day after the appointment of Ban
demonstrate that a very different process is practiced by that body.
Only after an agreement was achieved among the five permanent
members of the Security Council and supported by the 10 temporary
members, and voted on, did the Council agree to hear the party to the
problem that was before them. And only after hearing the views of all the
permanent members of the Security Council – the U.S., France, Britain,
China and Russia – and some of the temporary members about why they
voted for the sanctions on North Korea did the council allow the represen-
tative from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea),
Pak Gil Yon, to have a few minutes to speak. His talk was followed by a
brief statement from the South Korean ambassador to the U.N., who spoke
in support of the sanctions.
Page 4
In the brief opportunity he had to speak, Pak indicated that his
country felt it was the victim of hostile acts by the U.S. and that it had a
sovereign right to defend itself from such hostile acts. Also, he indicated
that the process of the Security Council in mandating sanctions on his
country was more like the activity of gangsters than an activity represent-
ing a legitimate means of investigating a dispute and determining how to
diffuse a tense situation.
Thus, the speeches supporting discussion and investigation in the
General Assembly on Friday, Oct. 13, and the closed decision-making
process that cul-minated the following day in the issuing of sanctions
against North Korea, are in stark contrast to each other.
The statements by several of the five permanent members of the
Security Council, the members who have the power to veto Security
Council decisions, emphasized that their resolution imposing sanctions
against North Korea reflected the condemnation of the “international
community” and that all the nations of the U.N. now had a legal obligation
to carry out the provisions of the sanctions.
While the Security Council does indeed have the power to impose
such sanctions on a country in the name of the U.N., the process by which
the sanctions were decided, is a sorry demonstration of power pol-itics that
involves very few of the 192 member countries that make up the U.N.
The chairman of the Latin American and Caribbean regional group,
in his comments to the future sec-retary general, explained that there are
important challenges for the U.N. in the role it plays in “today’s world.”
“International public opinion demands that the Security Council and
other bodies of the organization should perform a much better job. There
is a trend at this time for great and infinite opportunities as well as
unprecedented risks,” explained Ecuadorian Ambassador to the U.N.
Diego Cordovez.
“The United Nations, it is said, should be a base, a forum, a mode
that would enable the international community to take advantage of those
transcendental opportunities and foresee and neutralize potential risks,”
Cordovez added. “For those reasons, it is im-portant to insist on the need
to reform thoroughly and deeply the organization and undoubtedly, that
would be the main task and responsibility of our new secretary general.”
(He was referring to the failure of the member countries to reform the
Page 5
Security Council.)
“It is inconceivable,” he said, “that we are dis-cussing the reform of
the Security Council for decades, preparing infinite numbers of formulas,
doing report after report on that item, and yet it remains – immutable and
impossible to the critics for its lack of representation and its parsimonious
conduct to confront [the] world’s crises.”
The act of bringing sanctions against a member state by the Security
Council, with no investigation into the grievances that motivated North
Korea’s actions, stands as an egregious example of the failure of the
obligation of the U.N. to hear from each member state and to provide a
place where problems can be heard and discussed to find a solution.
North Korea says its problems are with the U.S. and that it has
developed nuclear devices because of its need to defend itself from the
U.S. That is a serious statement requiring investigation to see who has
caused the problem and who merits the imposition of sanctions.
Another aspect of the current process that ended in sanctions is that
the five permanent members of the Security Council are powerful
countries that possess nuclear weapons. These very countries have failed
to meet their obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty to
carry out disarmament.
1
Some scholars and diplomats explain that they are not surprised that
North Korea believes it needs to develop a nuclear capacity in order to
protect itself from danger. Given the actions of the U.S. government in
branding North Korea as part of the “axis of evil” and attacking another,
Iraq, which it had similarly branded, is but one of the reasons some
scholars believe the U.S. government provided North Korea with a
legitimate justification to develop nuclear weapons.
2
In its brief talk at the
Security Council meeting, North Korea expressed one of its disappoint-
ments:
It was gangster-like for the Security Council to adopt such a
coercive resolution against the Democratic People’s Republic
of Korea while neglecting the nuclear threat posed by the
United States against his country … . The council was incapa-
ble of offering a single word of concern when the United
States threatened to launch nuclear pre-emptive attacks,
reinforced its armed forces and conducted large-scale military
Page 6
exercises near the Korean Peninsula.
It must be remembered that the five permanent members of the
Security Council possess thousands of nuclear weapons.
Although commentators and scholars who feel there is justification
for North Korea’s actions want to discourage the proliferation of nuclear
weapons, they explain that punishing North Korea, while ignoring those
countries who are in the club of nations possessing nuclear weapons, can
only breed cynicism and hostility to non-proliferation and enforcement
efforts.
That North Korea can claim that it felt compelled to develop a
nuclear device, is a signal that the current regime of power politics is not
working in a way that provides alternatives for a small nation that feels
threatened by the nations that are nuclear powers. North Korea’s situation
is a demonstration that there is need for serious discussion by the 192
member states of the U.N. to understand the problems that North Korea
claims compel it to develop nuclear weapons as a means of securing its
borders and protecting its sovereignty.
There is indeed an international community, and there is indeed a
serious challenge facing it. The five big nuclear powers who wield veto
power on the Security Council can bring to bear punishment upon a small
nation that endeavors to develop nuclear capability. This, however, will
only compound the problem as it will only increase the hostility and
resentment that the small nation feels from such unequal treatment at the
hands of those who themselves possess nuclear weapons and who use the
power this capability bestows on them in such a self-serving manner.
The two Koreas have brought to the world stage the need for a truly
international organization, one that will consider all its members’ concerns
and needs, and find ways to support serious consideration of the problems
such nations have but are unable to solve themselves.
The urgent problem facing the U.N. at this juncture in its history is
not whether North Korea has developed and tested a nuclear device. It is
the breakdown reflected by the lack of participation and investigation by
the international community into how a crisis will be handled once it
develops, and whether the concerns and problems of those who are
involved in the crisis will be considered as part of the process of seeking
a solution. It is how the U.N. functions when tensions reach a point where
Page 7
serious attention is need-ed to help to understand and solve a problem.
Unfortunately for the world, and for North Korea, there was no such
process in the decision to im-pose sanctions on North Korea. The decision
to impose sanctions on North Korea was not made by the international
community. It was the decision of a small set of nuclear countries. Who
was responsible for the crisis was not explored before determining blame,
and thus the proclaimed solution is likely only to worsen the problem
rather than solve it. Yet the actual problem exists and the fact that people
of the world recognize it is highlighted by a recent poll taken in South
Korea, which showed that 43 percent of the population blames the U.S.
government for North Korea’s test of a nuclear device, while only 37.2
percent blame the North Koreans.
3
The actions in the Security Council to punish North Korea occurred
without the needed exploration of what had motivated North Korea to turn
to nuclear weapons as a means of self-defense. Can the U.N. be changed
in the needed ways so that it will be able to handle such problems? This
is the urgent issue facing the U.N. as the future secretary general takes
over the post in January. This is one of the challenges facing Ban Ki-
moon, member nations and people who are part of the U.N. organization
as it embarks on a new chapter in the history of this needed global
organization.
Notes:
1. See “Pyongyang’s Nuke Test Sparks Fission Over Response.”
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/140740/1. (No Longer Available.)
2. See “What About North Korea’s sovereignty?” http://www.jsonline.com/story/index
.aspx?id=518268. (No Longer Available.)
/lpage/nation/200610/kt2006101517230011990.htm. (No Longer Available.)
[Editor’s note: The following article appeared in Ohmynews International on March 21,
2007.]
North Korea’s $25 Million and Banco
Page 8
Delta Asia
by Ronda Hauben
A little known provision in the U.S. Patriot Act (2001) has been used
by the Bush administration against North Korea to freeze $25 million
dollars of its funds and to deny it access to the international banking
system and to hard currency. Actions under this provision of the Patriot
Act effectively stymied progress in disarmament talks between the U.S.,
North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan for over 18 months.
North Korea says that only when the seized $25 million and access to the
international banking system are restored is it willing to continue
negotiations under the Six-Party agreement concerning security and
denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
The little known provision of the Patriot Act is Section 311. It is also
known as the “International Money Laundering Abatement and Financial
Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001.”
1
The original purpose was allegedly related to the prevention,
detection and prosecution of money laun-dering connected to the financing
of terrorism. The law has rarely been used for its original purpose. Instead
it has been used by the Bush administration as a means of unchecked
political power against financial institutions like the Banco Delta Asia.
This case has an impact on those nations or institutions who used the bank,
like North Korea.
Two other sections of the Patriot Act currently under scrutiny, the
use of the Patriot Act to illegally obtain personal information on U.S.
citizens, and the use of a provision in the Patriot Act to replace U.S.
Attorneys, have been identified as being used by the Bush administration
for expanding and abusing ex-ecutive power. Section 311 provides another
means for sidestepping international and national legal practices and
substituting an ad hoc set of processes that leave the victims with no
means of due process or defense.
Section 311 has been called by its supporters, “a diplomatic
sledgehammer that gets results” and by its critics, a provision that denies
the accused “due process and presumes guilt.”
Critics say that this provision of the Patriot Act applies U.S. law to
Page 9
the financial institutions of other countries. In a proceeding under Section
311 of the Patriot Act (2001) the U.S. Treasury Department acts as accuser
and judge, in international jurisdictions. Also, often the evidence used by
the Treasury Department is classified and thus not available for examina-
tion by the accused so that it can’t be refuted.
This provision gives the U.S. Treasury the ability to use an Execu-
tive Branch administrative procedure rather than a legal proceeding as a
way to accuse a financial institution that is part of another nation’s
regulatory system of wrong doing, and then to find it guilty. Under this
provision of the Patriot Act, the accused is denied knowledge of the
evidence against it and is denied the right to speak in its own defense.
Section 311 of the Patriot Act (2001) was used against the BDA, a small
bank in Macao, to freeze substantial financial assets of North Korea and
also to deny North Korea access to the international banking system.
2
The
case against the BDA was instituted in September 2005 just after the U.S.
had signed the Six-Party agreement.
The accused under Section 311 is presumed to be guilty and the
burden falls on it to prove its innocence without being able to know the
evidence or charges.
3
Invoking Section 311 against the BDA effectively sabotaged the
implementation of the Six-Party agreement of September 2005
4
for 18
months as BDA did not have a process to challenge the Treasury
Department action, nor did those whose accounts at the bank had been
frozen, like North Korea. It was only after North Korea conducted a
missile test in July 2006 and the test of a nuclear device in October 2006,
that the Bush administration was willing to agree to negotiations over the
Treasury action.
Negotiations in Berlin between the U.S. government and North
Korea in January 2007 and then in Beijing in February 2007 with the U.S.,
South Korea, China, Russia and Japan, resulted in the Six-Party agreement
announced on Feb. 13, 2007.
The difference that most analysts point to in comparing the Feb. 13
2007 Six-Party agreement with the Six-Party agreement of September
2005 is that the more recent agreement includes a series of processes and
a time table. The critical difference that has been overlooked, however, is
that a requirement of the Feb. 13 agreement was that the U.S. restore the
Page 10
funds that were frozen by the actions of the U.S. Treasury Department.
Also North Korea’s access to the international financial system was to be
restored.
These requirements caused “intense friction” in Washington between
officials in the State Department and “officials in the Treasury Department
and in the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney who were said to favor
maintaining maximum pressure” on North Korea.
5
There were reports of
urgent telephone calls between officials in the State Department and the
Treasury. Assistant Secretary of State John Negroponte finally got a
decision from the Treasury Department by Friday, March 16. The Trea-
sury Department had ruled against the BDA. U.S. banks would not be
allowed to do business with it. The U.S. government announcement said
that it would be up to the Macao authorities to decide if they would
unfreeze and restore some or all of North Korea’s funds.
By the weekend of March 17, a behind the scenes drama continued
to unfold. China announced that it regretted the U.S. action. The owner of
the Macao bank said he would go to court to attempt to challenge the
decision. Getting off the plane in Beijing on Saturday to attend the next
stage of Six-Party Talks, Kim Kye-gwan, North Korea’s lead negotiator
for the Six-Party Talks, told reporters that all of the $25 million had to be
returned if North Korea was to go to the next step of the Six-Party Talks.
Hill announced that he would explain the settlement to the Chinese
and North Korean negotiators. China announced that a settlement had been
reached but that the details of it couldn’t yet be revealed. Subsequently,
there was an announcement that all of the $25 million in funds would be
returned to North Korea and deposited in China in an account held by the
North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank at the Bank of China in Beijing. U.S.
Treasury Secretary Daniel Glaser, in a press conference held with Hill,
confirmed the U.S. government decision. It was unknown he said, when
the funds would actually be put in the North Korean bank account.
Subsequently, diplomats who were in Beijing to continue the Six-
Party Talks told reporters that North Korean diplomats said the funds had
to be in the bank account for them to continue with negotiations.
Though there have been many newspaper articles reporting the
standoff in the Six-Party Talks caused by the dispute over the use of
Section 311 against North Korea, few of the articles provide an under-
Page 11
standing of the underlying issues involved. A commentator on BBC, for
example, demonstrating a serious lack of understanding of the use of
Section 311 and the abuse of power it represents said this is an example
of the high price that North Korea will extract for its cooperation in the
talks.
It is not without cause then, that in describing the process of the Six-
Party Talks Hill, compared the pro-cess to a video game. He warned:
“This process, not unlike a video game gets more and more difficult as
you get to different levels.”
6
Notes:
1.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/Section301.html.
2. “Treasury Casts a Wide Net Under Patriot Act.”
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2007/mar/18/treasury-casts-wide-net-under-
patriot-act-20070318/.
3. “The U.S. government has never publicly detailed evidence behind its charges. Nor has
it sought to initiate legal action, relying instead on Section 311 of the Patriot Act, which
critics say extends U.S. laws to cover other countries.” “Bush Administration Plan May
Unfreeze North Korean Funds.”
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/latest-news/article24461644.html.
4. Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks Beijing, September 19,
2005.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2005/53490.htm.
5. “Administration Reconsiders Some North Korea Restrictions.”
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/columnists/warren_p_strobel/1655
4751.htm. (Not currently available.)
6. “U.S., North Korea Move to Open Ties.” http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview
/article_view.asp?no=348974&rel_no=1. (No Longer Available.)
[Editor’s note: In August 2007, Ronda Hauben made a presentation at the World
Fellowship in New Hampshire, U.S. She spoke about covering the U.N. as a featured
writer for OhmyNews International. In the following section from her presentation, she
shows there can be a power in netizen reporting.]
The Net Gives the Power of the Reporter
to the Netizen
by Ronda Hauben
Page 12
BDA Story
This spring as a featured writer for OhmyNews International I
covered the 50
th
anniversary dinner in New York City of the Korea
Society. One of the speakers at the dinner was U.S. Assistant Secretary of
State Christopher Hill. He explained the problem of $25 million of North
Korean money being frozen as part of a U.S. Treasury Department
proceeding against a bank in Macao, China, the Banco Delta Asia (BDA).
This is a problem that was at the time holding up the implementation of
the Six-Party agreement to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Hill
committed himself to work on this problem until it was solved.
There were several Korean journalists covering the event for their
publications. They were particularly interested in what Hill said, but Hill’s
talk in itself did not seem to represent a newsworthy event.
In the next few days, however, an important story was developing.
In the process of trying to unravel the unfolding developments, I
found a story online about the activity the bank had engaged in for North
Korea. It documented that this was legitimate banking activity, not illegal
activity. The news organization which published the story was the
McClatchy Newspapers. I also found links on the blog, “China Matters,”
to some documents refuting the Treasury Department’s charges against the
bank.
I now had the documents in the case. The U.S. government’s
findings were general statements providing no specific evidence of wrong
doing on the part of the bank. The bank’s statements and refutation gave
significant documentation refuting charges of illegal activity on the part
of the bank. The refutation also made the case that there were political
motives for the U. S. governments’ allegations rather than actual illegal
activity on the part of the bank. The U.S. government had targeted a small
Macao bank to scare the many banks in China. “To kill the chicken to
scare the monkeys,” as the government document explained, quoting an
old Chinese proverb.
At last I had the news peg for an important story. I wrote an article,
submitting it online around 5 a.m. my time on May 18 to OhmyNews
International (OMNI), using the software OMNI provides for submitting
articles. Also on May 18, the Wall Street Journal carried an Op Ed by the
Page 13
former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton. His article scolded the
U.S. government for negotiating to return the $25 million to North Korea.
By noon that day, my story appeared on OMNI. So an Internet search that
day gave people who searched two substantially different analyses to
consider. (See Behind the Blacklisting of Banco Delta Asia, the next
article in this issue.)
This short description was part of a talk that I gave in San Francisco
in May 2007 at the International Communications Association (ICA)
annual conference.
During the conference, I summed up my experience working on this
issue with the conclusion:
There is not yet an OhmyNews (OMN) in the U.S. So my story
about the connection of the U.S. government’s policy toward
China and the U.S. government actions against the Macao
bank is not yet likely to be able to impact how the mainstream
news media in the U.S. frames the story with North Korea and
the Six-Party Talks. But the need for a U.S. model of OMN
becomes all the more urgent when one participates in OMNI
and thus has the experience of exploring the potential of what
it will make possible.
Next Episode
Little did I realize when I gave my talk in San Francisco, however,
that this story was not ending, but a new aspect was developing.
When I returned home from the ICA conference, I did a follow-up
story to my two earlier stories about the BDA issue.
A short time later, on June 11, I found a surprising email in my
mailbox. The email was from a reporter who said she worked for the
Korean Service of the Voice of America News (VOA News).
She wrote:
Hello Ms. Hauben
She introduced herself as being a reporter with the Voice of America News
in Washington D.C.
Her email said:
While I was working on a story about BDA issue, I read your report,
‘Behind the Blacklisting of Banco Delta Asia.’ I thought you made some
Page 14
valuable points about the BDA issue in this report, I was wondering if I
could have a conversation with you in this matter. Since I am on deadline,
I’m trying very hard to get a hold of you. So I would really appreciate it
if you call or email me back ASAP … .
She gave her phone number.
The Voice of American News is now part of the U.S. State Depart-
ment.
I called her as she had asked and she said she wanted to interview me
by phone. I asked her to let me know what she would want to speak with
me about. She sent me an email elaborating:
The questions I am planning to ask you during the interview are going to
be about both the content of your article and how you did it. Although I’d
like to ask you, first of all, how you came up with the idea of writing this
article, the focus of this interview is not just on how you prepared the
article.
The purpose of this interview is to let our listeners know what is
going on regarding the BDA issue and how the BDA issue is developing.
When I read your article, I thought you made valuable and critical points
about the BDA issue, and I thought it might be very important to let your
idea about the BDA issue be heard by our listeners.
She listed questions she would ask me in the interview.
1. How you came up with the idea of writing this article? How you
prepared it? About your sources
2. Briefly summarize your findings or main points of the article?
3. What you are trying to accomplish by writing this article? What needs
to be done to resolve the BDA issue?
She wrote ending the email:
Finally, I wanted to ask you if we could do this interview sometime
between 9am and 9:30am ... . Thanks again.
She did indeed call and we had a substantial phone conversation
discussing my stories, the Internet sources I had used, and what I saw as
the problem with the American government’s freezing the Banco Delta
Asia funds.
Afterwards she asked specifically for the urls to follow up on the
Internet sources I had cited. These were basically material I had found
including a blog, several government documents, and copies of the legal
Page 15
documents submitted by the Bank owner to appeal the Treasury Depart-
ment ruling against the Bank, all on the Internet.
This was all happening at a time when there were new efforts to find
a solution to the roadblock that freezing the BDA funds belonging to
North Korea represented to the continuation of the Six-Party Talks.
The Voice of America News reporter said she would consider
contacting the former U.S. government officials who were responsible for
crafting the plan to freeze North Korea’s assets at Banco Delta Asia.
Just at this time, the U.S. goverment announced a new possible
arrangement for returning the funds to North Korea via the international
banking system. In the following week it proved successful.
The Voice of American News reporter wrote me saying she had other
stories to do and was not for now going to pursue this story any longer.
I can only speculate that perhaps her contacting me and interviewing
me was part of an effort by some people within the U.S. government to put
preassure on others within the government who were creating the
roadblocks.
Regardless of her motivation, the Voice of America News reporter
had contacted me before the situation was resolved. Whether the contact
had any impact on the resolution I can only speculate. At the very least,
the articles I had done had caught the attention of someone at the Voice of
America News which is part of the U.S. State Dept. I was given the chance
to explain how I framed the story of the BDA and what I saw the
controversy surrounding it to be.
So my story did indeed have more of an impact than I thought
possible when I gave my talk at the ICA in San Francisco. OMNI and the
Internet in general gave these stories about the BDA a power they would
not otherwise have had.
[Editor’s note: The following article appeared in Ohmynews International on May 19,
2007]
Behind the Blacklisting of Banco Delta
Asia
Page 16
Is the Policy Aimed at Targeting
China as Well as North Korea?
by Ronda Hauben
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, speaking at the
Korea Society’s 50
th
Anniversary dinner in New York City on May 15,
said that he was determined not to “allow $26 million or $25 million get
between us and a deal that will finally do something about nuclear
weapons on the Korean peninsula.” He promised that Kathleen Stephens
at the Korea desk at the State Department was working on the problem and
that “we are going to keep after this problem till we solve it.” His
statement didn’t give further details about how this problem was to be
solved, a problem that had interrupted the progress that seemed at last
possible in the Feb. 13 Six-Party agreement.
1
Just two days later, on May 17, the U.S. Wachovia Bank announced
that it is exploring a request from the State Department to transfer the
funds from the BDA (Banco Delta Asia) to North Korea. Wachovia Bank
reported that it would require the necessary approvals from bank
regulators to do the transfer.
Until this latest announcement, banks have been unwilling to do the
transfer because of the legal action that the U.S. government took against
the BDA, by ruling that it was involved in criminal activity under Section
311 of the U.S. Patriot Act. Banks which deal with a bank that has been
found guilty of such illegal acts risk losing their access to the international
financial system. North Korea has said that the denuclearization and other
aspects of the Six-Party agreement that it has been part of can only go
forward when the BDA situation is resolved. “To make the money transfer
possible freely just like before has been our demand … from the begin-
ning,” a spokesperson from North Korea said.
2
In his daily press briefing on May 17, Scott McCormack at the U.S.
State Department said, “We all want to see the BDA issue resolved,
obviously resolved within the laws and regulations of the United States as
well as the international financial system, and we’d like to move on and
get back to the business of the Six-Party Talks, which is really focused on
the issue of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.”
3
Page 17
Whether this latest development with Wachovia Bank will provide
the needed breakthrough, it is too soon to tell. But there are other
developments which may provide the needed pressures on the U.S.
government to decriminalize the $25 million it has frozen of North Korean
funds and restore North Korea’s access to the international banking
system. Their access was severely impeded by the action that the U.S.
Treasury Department took against the BDA.
The developments I am referring to are the release in the public
domain of several documents related to the U. S. Treasury Department’s
actions against BDA. One of the documents is a sworn statement by the
owner of the BDA, Mr. Stanley Au, in support of his petition to revoke the
rule imposing the special measures taken by the U.S. Treasury Department
against his bank. Another document is the petition in support of his case.
Also the Treasury Department finding against the bank has been put
online. These documents have been made available on the blog “China
Matters.”
4
In his statement, Au explains the history of his bank’s relations with
North Korea and how there was only one experience, which occurred in
June 1994, when there was a problem with counterfeit U.S. dollars. At the
time, the bank reported this incident to the U.S. government. Agents from
the U.S. government came to the bank and questioned Au. He answered
their questions and asked if the agents recommended that the bank “desist
from doing business with North Korean entities.” The agents said “they
would like us to continue to deal with them as it was better that we
conducted this business than another financial entity that may not be so
cooperative with the United States government.”
Au explains that there was no further experience with counterfeit
money showing up in the transactions of the bank. All “large value
deposits of U.S. dollar bills from North Korean sources” were sent to the
Hong Kong branch of the Republic National Bank of New York (which
became HSBC) to be certified that they were authentic via advanced
technology possessed by that bank. Smaller quantities of bills were
examined in accord with common banking practices by the bank itself.
Au also explains that he had not been approached by U.S. govern-
ment agents alerting him to any problem or illegal activity. The first he
learned that his bank was being charged as a bank engaged in “illicit
Page 18
activities” came when he saw a report in the Asian Wall Street Journal in
September 2005 that his bank was a candidate for a U.S. money launder-
ing blacklist. He tells how “this news came as a bolt out of the blue – the
Bank had never been informed by the United States that its practices were
a cause of any money laundering concern, and the counterfeiting event
that the media reported as the basis for the designation had occurred more
than ten years earlier and had been promptly reported to the authorities by
Banco Delta Asia.”
5
Stanley Au’s statement is in sharp contrast with the account in the
U.S. government’s Federal Register of the finding against the bank by the
U.S. Treasury Department.
6
The Federal Register finding states that the bank had provided
financial services for more than 20 years to multiple North Korean-related
individuals and entities that were engaged in illicit activities. It provides
no specific details of what such illicit activities were. It claims that the
entities paid a fee to Banco Delta Asia for their access to the bank. The
finding claims that the bank facilitated wire transfers and helped a front
company.
In his statement, Stanley Au maintained that the BDA did not charge
a fee for its services nor did it conduct illicit services for North Korea or
any other customer. The bank was only one of the banks in Macao that did
business with North Korea. The business his bank had with North Korea
began in the mid 1970s and was to assist North Korea with its foreign
trade transactions. Also Au described North Korea as a gold producing
country and that in the late 1990s the bank had acted as a “gold bullion
trader on behalf of the North Koreans”. Also the BDA bought or sold
foreign currency notes for North Korea, including U.S. dollars, because
North Korea had a limited banking system and so it couldn’t do such
transactions itself (see Statement, pp. 3-4).
The petition submitted to the U.S. Dept of the Treasury to challenge
the finding against BDA proposes that BDA was targeted not because of
any “voluminous” evidence of money laundering but “because it was an
easy target in the sense that it was not so large that its failure would bring
down the financial system.”
7
In the substantial and prolific analysis of the BDA problem that has
been developed on the blog “China Matters”, there is the assessment that
Page 19
North Korea has legitimate financial activity and that the BDA was
legitimately serving as one of the banks for that activity. Even with the
U.N.’s sanctions, it was not appropriate to target for blacklisting the
legitimate financial activities of North Korea. The sanctions that the U.N.-
imposed against North Korea were to be aimed at its activity that was
related to nuclear weapon development, not to normal financial transac-
tions.
The author of China Matters blog writes
8
:
The alternative view … is that legitimate North Korean
financial activity does exist, BDA had a right to solicit North
Korean accounts and handle North Korean transactions, and
Stanley Au should be allowed to run his bank as long as he
conforms to the laws of his jurisdiction – and (the bank) not be
used as a political football in Washington’s dealings with
Pyongyang.
To put it more succinctly, the blog China Matters quotes David
Ascher, who had been the coordinator for the Bush Administration
working group on North Korea and a senior adviser in East Asian affairs
in the State Department, in testimony to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-proliferation, and Trade on April 18,
2007, explaining why Banco Delta was chosen to be blacklisted from the
international banking system:
9
Banco Delta was a symbolic target. We were trying to kill the
chicken to scare the monkeys. And the monkeys were big
Chinese banks doing business in North Korea … and we’re not
talking about tens of millions, we’re talking hundreds of
millions.
The purpose of the action against the BDA appears not only to have
been to target North Korea and its access to the international banking
system, but also to send a message to China.
Therefore it would appear that the action against BDA is a carefully
crafted political action and that it will be necessary that there be public
understanding, discussion and debate about what is behind this action in
order to find a way to have the policy that gave rise to the BDA action
changed.
Instead of the U.S. mainstream press carrying out the needed
Page 20
investigation about why BDA has been targeted and what is behind this
action, there have been continual condemnations of North Korea.
Fortunately there are journalists like those who work with the McClatchy
News Service who have made an effort to probe what is happening
behind-the-scenes in the BDA affair and blogs like China Matters which
have taken the time and care to begin uncovering what the BDA affair is
really all about. This is but one of the stories of what is really going on
behind the scenes within the U.S. government that has been hidden from
the public. This is one of the stories yet to be unraveled by bloggers, and
citizen journalists.
10
Notes:
1. See the Article “North Korea’s $25 Million and Banco Delta Asia” in this issue.
2. “North Korea says work to transfer bank funds under way,” AFP, May 15, 2007.
https://www.spacewar.com/reports/North_Korea_Says_Work_To_Transfer_Bank_Fun
ds_Under_Way_999.html.
(3) Scott McCormack, Daily Press Briefing, Washington DC, May 17, 2007.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0705/S00399/state-dept-daily-press-briefing-may-17-
2007.htm.
4. “Bank owner disputes money-laundering allegations.”
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world /article24463246.html.
5. About the Statement of Mr. Stanley Au in Support of Petition to Revoke Rule Imposing
S p e c i a l M e a s u r e s A g a i n s t B a n c o D e l t a A s i a . S e e :
https://www.macaobusiness.com/lifting-of-us-sanct ions-on-delta-asia-bank-the-result-of-
15-years-of-unrelenting-effort-chairman/.
See also Kevin G. Hall, “Bank owner disputes money-laundering allegations,” McClatchy
Newspapers, May 16, 2007.
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world /article24463246.html
6. Department of the Treasury, 31 CFR Part 103 / RIN 1506-AA83, Federal Register /
Vol 72, No. 52 / Monday, March 19, 2007 / Rules and Regulations.
https://www.govinfo.gov /content /pkg/FR-2007-03-19/pdf/07-1303.pdf..
7. Petition of Mr. Stanley Au and Delta Asia Group (Holdings) Ltd. to Rescind Final
Rule, p. 12.
https://www.ncnk.org/resources/publications/Jones_Day_Petition
_Rescind_BDA_Rule.pdf.
8. “Stanley Au Makes His Case for Banco Delta Asia,” Tuesday, May 15, 2007.
http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2007/05/stanley-au-makes-his-case-for-banco.html.
9. “David Asher’s Dead End,” Saturday, April 28, 2007.
http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2007/04/david-ashers-dead-end.html.
See also “China’s Proliferation to North Korea and Iran, and its role in addressing the
nuclear and missile situations in both nations,” Hearing, Sept 14, 2006, Nov. 2006, p.
Page 21
115-116.
https://www.uscc.gov/hearings/hearing-chinas-proliferation-north-korea-and-iran-and-its-
role-addressing-nuclear-and.
10. Ronda Hauben, “Bill Moyers and the Emergence of U.S. Citizen Journalism: Power
/ar ticleview/%3Cbr% 3Ehttp://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article
_view.asp?no=360069&rel_no=1. (No longer available.)
[Editor’s note: The following article first appeared on the netizenblog on August 31,
2013.*]
United Nations Command
As Camouflage: On the Role of the UN
in the Unending Korean War
by Ronda Hauben
I. – Some Background
The story of the Korean War is a story not often told. Yet sixty years
after the agreement to end the military hostilities on July 27, 1953, there
is not yet a peace treaty to end the war. This article on the 2013 occasion
of the 60
th
Anniversary of the Armistice Agreement is intended as a
contribution to the body of research and study needed to find the
underlying cause of the bottleneck impeding the negotiation of a peace
treaty so a breakthrough can be made.
Korea, which had been one nation for over 1000 years, had been
forcibly divided at the end of WWII. By the UN legitimating an election
in the South of Korea in May 1948 which was boycotted by many Koreans
and from which all North Koreans and many South Koreans were
excluded, a formal structural division was created which continues until
today.
1
The significant aspect of the UN supported election was that it led
to an official government structure for only the southern part of Korea,
thus solidifying the division of Korea. The government structure created
in the South by the election was a repressive government structure. One
view of the military conflict that became known as the Korean War was
Page 22
that it was a civil war that was trying to restore Korea as one country.
The U.S. Government response to the fighting which broke out in
June 1950 in Korea was to perpetuate support for the repressive
government that the U.S. and UN had put in place as the Republic of
Korea (more commonly known as South Korea). This is the context in
which the United Nations Security Council resolutions of June and July
1950 authorizing UN participation in the Korean War took place.
The question that led me to begin this study was:
What Was the Role of the UN in the Korean War and What Should be the
Role of the UN in Bringing an End to the War?
It is important to take into account that before any action was taken
on the part of the UN on June 27, 1950 authorizing intervention in the
Korean War, the U.S. had decided and began to send military support to
the South Korean side of the conflict. The independent journalist, I.F.
Stone in his book, “The Hidden History of the Korean War,” describes this
U.S. action as forcing the UN Security Council to support the U.S. Gov-
ernment action in Korea.
2
Stone writes:
When Truman ‘ordered the United States air and sea forces to
give the Korean Government troops cover and support’ he was
in effect imposing military sanctions before they had been
authorized by the Security Council. The Council had to vote
sanctions or put itself in the position of opposing the action
taken by the United States. For governments dependent on
American bounty and themselves fearful of Soviet expansion,
that was too much to expect, though again Yugoslavia had the
courage to vote ‘No,’ an act of principle for which it got no
credit from the Soviet bloc while antagonizing the United
States to which it owed its Council seat.
By acting before the Security Council could act, the U.S. was in
violation of Article 2(7) of the UN Charter which requires a Security
Council action under Chapter VII before there is any armed intervention
into the internal affairs of another nation unless the arms are used in self-
defense. (See Article 51 of the UN Charter. The U.S. armed intervention
in Korea was clearly not an act of self defense for the U.S.) Also the
actions of the UN have come to be referred to as the actions of the “United
Page 23
Nations Command”(UNC), but this designation is not to be found in the
June and July 1950 Security Council resolutions authorizing participation
in the Korean War.
3
What is the significance of the U.S. using the UN in
these ways?
The current U.S. military command in South Korea claims to wear
three hats: Command of U.S. troops in South Korea, Combined Forces
Command (U.S. and South Korean troops), and “United Nations
Command” with responsibilities with respect to the Armistice. The United
Nations, however, has no role in the oversight or decision making
processes of the “United Nations Command.” The U.S. Government is in
control of the “United Nations Command.” The use by the U.S. of the
designation “United Nations Command,” however, creates and perpetuates
the misconception that the UN is in control of the actions and decisions
taken by the U.S. under the “United Nations Command.”
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (more commonly
referred to as North Korea) has called for disbanding the “United Nations
Command”(UN Command). At a press conference held at the United
Nations on June 21, 2013, the North Korean Ambassador to the UN,
Ambassador Sin Son Ho argued that the actions of the U.S. Government
using the designation “United Nations Command” are not under any form
of control by the United Nations.
4
Since the UN has no role in the decision
making process of what the U.S. does under the title of the “United
Nations Command,” North Korea contends the U.S. should cease its claim
that it is acting as the “United Nations Command.”
II. – UN Authorized “Unified Command”
Looking at the Security Council resolutions related to Korea that
were passed in June and July 1950, it is clear that the content of these
resolutions supports North Korea’s argument. During this period the UN
Security Council passed four resolutions. They are:
S.C. 82 (V)-S/1501 on June 25, 1950
S.C. 83 (V)-S/1511 on June 27, 1950
S.C. 84 (V)-S/1588 on July 7, 1950
S.C. 85 (V)-S/1657 July 31, 1950
None of these resolutions refers to a “United Nations Command” or
gives the United States permission to call itself the United Nations
Page 24
Command.
The last two of these resolutions refer to a “Unified Command.” S.C.
Resolution 84 of July 7, 1950 is the first Security Council resolution to
refer to the creation of a “Unified Command.” The language of the
resolution says that the Security Council, “Recommends that all members
providing forces and other assistance pursuant to the aforesaid Security
Council resolution make such forces and other assistance available to a
Unified Command under the United States of America.”
The resolution states that the Security Council requests the United
States to designate the commander of such forces, and it authorizes the
“Unified Command” at its discretion to use the United Nations flag
“concurrently with the flags of the various nations participating.”
S.C. Resolution 84 also made the request that “the United States …
provide the Security Council with reports as appropriate on the course of
action taken under the Unified Command.”
In subsequent action by the Security Council during this period, the
members of the Security Council, were careful to refer to the U.S.
command of the Korean War forces related to the United Nations as the
“Unified Command.”
Therefore, when reviewing the action by the U.S. to designate itself
as the “United Nations Command,” the question is raised as to how, why
and by whom the designation “United Nations Command” was substituted
for the Security Council designation of a “Unified Command.”
S.C. Resolution 84 was passed on July 7 using the designation
“Unified Command.” The following day, on July 8, the U.S. President
Harry Truman appointed General Douglas MacArthur to head this
Command. A Memo referring to this appointment, states that with this
appointment, General MacArthur was designated as the Commander of the
“Unified Command.”
5
In the period immediately following the passing of UN Security
Council Resolution 84, U.S. Ambassador Warren Austin refers to the U.S.
government command as the “Unified Command.”
For example, “A Letter to the UN Secretary-General from Warren
Austin, U.S. Ambassador to the UN,” on July 12, says:
(…) I have the honor to inform you that the President of the
United States, in response to the Security Council resolution of
Page 25
7 July 1950, has on 8 July designated General Douglas
MacArthur as the Commanding General of the military forces
which the Members of the United Nations place under the
Unified Command of the United States pursuant to the United
Nations effort to assist the Republic of Korea.
Similarly the “Unified Command” was the designation used in a
letter dated 24 July 1950 transmitting the first Report from General
MacArthur to the Security Council. The Report is titled, “First Report to
the Security Council by the United States Government on the course of
action taken under the Unified Command (USG).”
III. – U.S. Substitutes “United Nations Command” as
Camouflage
It appears that it was in a U.S. Government communiqué dated July
25 that the designation “UN Command” was first officially used in a U.S.
Government communication to the UN. This document was titled,
“Communique Number 135 of the Far East Command S/1629 25 July
1950.” It states:
The United Nations Command with Headquarters in Tokyo
was officially established today with General Douglas
MacArthur as Commander-in-Chief. The announcement was
made in General Order No. 1, General Headquarters, United
Nations Command. The order reads:
1. In response to the resolution of the Security Council of the
United Nations of July 7, 1950, the President of the United
States has designated the undersigned Commander-in-Chief of
the Military Forces this date the United Nations Command.
Pursuant thereto, there is established this date the United
Nations Command, with General Headquarters in Tokyo,
Japan.
According to this communiqué dated July 25, 1950, it is the
President of the United States not the United Nations that was responsible
for creating the designation “United Nations Command,” as a replacement
for the UN authorized “Unified Command.” The communiqué alleges that
this was done to fulfill the obligations of S.C. Resolution 84 of July 7. It
Page 26
is evident, however, from reading the resolution of July 7 that there is no
reference in that resolution to a “United Nations Command.”
Why did the U.S. government substitute the designation “United
Nations Command” for the Security Council designation “Unified
Command” after initially referring to the designation of “Unified
Command,” language which was actually provided for in the Security
Council resolution of July 7?
There are accounts that are helpful in understanding what was going
on behind the scenes at the time that can give clues to solve this puzzle.
One such account is provided by an article by James W Houck titled, “The
Command and Control of United Nation Forces In the Era of Peace
Enforcement.”
6
At the time he wrote this article in the early 1990s, Houck
was Force Judge Advocate for the Commander of the U.S. Naval Forces
Central Command in Bahrain.
Houck writes that UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie and some of the
countries on the Security Council, namely the U.K., France and Norway
were in favor of creating a structure to provide for a United Nations role
in the Korean operations.
Houck describes how, “During the negotiations preceding
authorization of the unified command, Secretary-General Trygve Lie had
proposed a ‘committee as coordination of assistance for Korea’ consisting
of troop contributing states and the Republic of Korea.”
7
While the explicit purpose of the committee, Secretary-General Lie
explained, was, “to stimulate and coordinate offers of assistance, its deeper
purpose was to keep the United Nations ‘in the picture’,” as Lie himself
writes in his recollections of his seven-year term as UN Secretary-General.
He explains that his purpose was, “to promote continuing United Nations
participation in and supervision of the military security action in Korea of
a more intimate and undistracted character than the Security Council could
be expected to provide.”
8
The U.S., however, was opposed to the idea of such a supervisory
committee and had the power to turn it down. This effectively left the U.S.
in control of the decisions regarding what was to be done in the UN
authorized operations of the Korean War.
“From the start of the Korean conflict,” Houck explains, “the United
States exercised both political control and strategic direction over the
Page 27
operation.”
9
Though the Security Council authorized the U.S. intervention
in the Korean War, the Security Council failed to fulfill its obligation
under the UN Charter to act as the political authority for military actions
taken under the authority of the UN Security Council.
10
Implicit in Chapter
7 of the UN Charter is that it is the Security Council that can exercise
force not that it can cede its authority to others.
Instead of the United Nations fulfilling its charter obligations,
however, as Houck documents, “The United Nations, did not interfere at
all in the purely military aspects of the operation and even in political
matters it confined itself to making recommendations.”
Corroborating Houck’s account, a military historian, James Schnabel
in his account of the first year of the Korean War, describes why the U.S.
government was opposed to the Committee favored by Trygve Lie and
several Security Council members. Schnabel explains that the response of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff was to oppose such a project. They were hostile
to the potential of such a committee to try to control military operations.
“The Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Schnabel writes, “wanted a command
arrangement in which the United States, as executive agent for the United
Nations, would direct the Korean operation, with no positive contact
between the field commander and the United Nations.”
11
Though the U.S. Government had turned down the political oversight
committee proposed by the Secretary-General, there was, according to
Schnabel, a recognition that the unilateral political and military control the
U.S. Government exercised over the “Unified Command” was
problematic. The Chiefs of Staff directed MacArthur “to avoid any
appearance of unilateral American action in Korea.”
As Schnabel writes,”For worldwide political reasons,” the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, directed that, “it is important to emphasize repeatedly the
fact our operations are in support of the United Nations Security Council.”
According to Schnabel, “this led General MacArthur to identify
himself whenever practicable as Commander-in-Chief, United Nations
Command (CINCUNC), and whenever justified, would emphasize in his
communiqués the activities of forces of other member nations.”
Noting that the State Department proposed to the Secretary of
Defense that reports be sent to the Security Council each week, Schnabel
writes, “These would keep world attention on the fact that the United
Page 28
States was fighting in Korea for the United Nations, not itself.” But these
reports were not required and were not a mechanism for UN supervision
over the U.S. activities or decision making processes.
Decisions on the operations of MacArthur’s command were made by
the U.S. Government, writes Schnabel. The United Nations at no time in
the Korean War sought to interfere in the control of operations which were
the responsibility of the United States. As MacArthur later testified to a
Senate investigating committee, “… my connections with the United
Nations was largely nominal … everything I did came from our own
Chiefs of Staff … . The controls over me were exactly the same as though
the forces under me were all Americans. All of my communications were
to the American high command here.”
12
IV. – “United Nations Command” as Achilles Heel
UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie, however, points out that the
insistence on unilateral control of the conduct of the War waged in Korea
by the U.S. had its Achilles heel. Lie wrote, “As the Korean War
developed, Washington complained, and had reason to complain, that the
United States was carrying too much of a burden; but its unwillingness, in
those early days, when the pattern of the police action was being set, to
accord the United Nations a larger measure of direction and thereby
participation no doubt contributed to the tendency of the Members to let
Washington assume most of the responsibility for the fighting.”
13
So an interesting anomaly emerges. The UN resolution authorizing
military action in Korea spoke about a “Unified Command” and the
original resolution the UN Secretary-General proposed included a
mechanism for the UN to supervise the military action. This control was
rejected by the U.S. government, and it appears, the UN never pressed to
exert its supervision over the conduct of the Korean War. This control was
thus ceded to the U.S. government.
While the U.S. government had total control over the Korean
campaign it was waging, it appears that it also needed a means to
camouflage the unilateral nature of this operation. The designation
“United Nations Command,” which the U.S. government assigned to its
operation, replaced the designation of the “Unified Command” described
in Security Council Resolution 84. This change of name provided the
Page 29
camouflage to hide the unilateral nature of the U.S. command and control
and of its conduct of the war against North Korea.
The U.S. Government needed the appearance that its unilateral
actions were on behalf of and under the United Nations. This was provided
by changing the designation of the Command from the “Unified
Command” to the “United Nations Command.” The change of name
helped to create the needed misleading appearance. Similarly, the reports
that the U.S. Government voluntarily submitted to the UN Security
Council were titled, “Reports of the United Nations Command.” This
made it appear that the U.S. was conducting the war on behalf of the UN
and under its supervision.
This misleading designation continues to exist today over 60 years
after it was created, thereby continuing to give the world the false
impression that the campaign waged by the U.S. in Korea was and
continues to be a United Nations operation and that even today the UN has
a presence on the Korean Peninsula.
While the UN did not participate in the decision making process of
the military campaign carried out in its name, it played a role then and
continues to play a role by allowing the U.S. Government to appropriate
the United Nations name as a camouflage cover for the actions of the U.S.
Government. What is the UN responsibility in such a matter for what was
done, and for what continues to be done in its name? That is the essence
of the question raised by North Korea’s call that the “United Nations
Command” be dissolved.
V. – Conclusion
The research represented in this paper presents a curious, but
significant irony. The UN authorized Member States to intervene in the
Korean War, to form the “Unified Command,” to use the UN flag along
with the flags of the member states participating in the “Unified
Command,” and it authorized the U.S. to appoint a Commander in Chief
for the “Unified Command.”
According to the obligation required under the UN Charter, and to
the original efforts of Trygve Lie, with support from three Security
Council members, namely, the U.K., France, and Norway, there was an
effort to set up a political entity that would oversee the Korean War
Page 30
operation for the Security Council.
The U.S., however, rejected the proposal and succeeded in
controlling the political and the strategic direction for the Korean War.
After rejecting the UN proposal for UN supervision over U.S. actions and
decisions, the U.S. put itself forward as the “United Nations Command.”
Thus assuming the cloak of the United Nations, by referring to itself as the
United Nations. This mechanism served as a means to misrepresent the
U.S. Government’s unilateral actions and decision making processes in the
Korean War.
Recently several UN Secretary-Generals, including Secretary-
General Boutros Boutros Gali, Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon have acknowledged that the U.S. was in
charge of the Command structure of the Korean War activity taken under
the authority of the “Unified Command,” and that the United Nations had
no role in overseeing the actions undertaken in the name of the UN. The
statement is made that the UN “never had any role in the command of any
armed forces deployed in the Korean peninsula.”
The difficulty raised by such a claim, however, is that it evades the
salient fact that the Security Council authorized the U.S. to assume this
role in violation of the obligations implicit in the UN Charter that the UN
exercise supervision over the political, and strategic decision making
processes of an action approved under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.
Therefore, there is some truth to the statements of Boutros Boutros
Ghali, Kofi Annan, and Ban Ki-moon that the UN had no role in the
command of the military activity carried out under its name in Korea.
Specifically as the Spokesperson for Ban Ki-moon stated recently,”The
UN did not at any time have any role in the command of the forces that
operated in Korea in 1950-1953.”
14
But what this leaves out is that the UN authorized the U.S. to
designate the Commander of the “Unified Command.” Then, however,
under pressure from the U.S., the UN failed to exercise its obligation to
supervise the actions of the “Unified Command.”
Subsequently, the UN continues to evade fulfilling its obligations by
continuing to allow the U.S. to claim that it is the “United Nations
Command” in Korea and in failing to provide its political supervision over
what the U.S. has done and continues to do in Korea in the name of the
Page 31
UN.
The DPRK proposal is that the U.S. cease to call itself the “United
Nations Command.” It is important to include a recognition of how the
U.S. Government activity represents a continuing violation of the UN
Charter.
Recently, in response to a question, the Spokesperson for Ban Ki-
moon said that the issues of the Korean Armistice are issues that do not
concern the United Nations as the United Nations is not a party to the
Armistice.
15
Why then has the United Nations allowed the U.S. to continue
to use the designation, “United Nations Command” to misrepresent itself
as acting under the control of the UN in the Armistice?
Unless the UN takes responsibility for allowing the U.S. to claim the
authority of the United Nations in its continuing actions as part of the
Armistice, the UN is continuing to allow actions in violation of the UN
Charter. If there is a “United Nations Command” that is part of the Korean
Armistice Agreement, such a command must be under the political and
strategic direction of the UN Security Council. Otherwise, the authority of
the UN Charter is being treated as a charade to justify U.S. Government
unilateral activity under the camouflage of the UN name. It is as if the UN
is but a set of words to hide the illegal acts of one of the Great Powers.
VI. – Epilogue
There is another significant aspect of the conduct of the U.S.
government with respect to its initiating and intervening into the Korean
War. This has to do with the role played by the U.S. Government in
bypassing not only the requirements of the UN Charter, but also the
requirement of the U.S. Constitution.
The UN Charter specifies that all military action taken to intervene
in another country requires a resolution of the Security Council under
Chapter 7. Yet the U.S. government made the decision and began to act on
that decision to intervene in the Korean conflict before there was any such
action by the UN Security Council. This represented a violation by the
U.S. Government of the UN Charter.
16
Similarly, the U.S. Executive Branch violated the provision of the
U.S. Constitution requiring that no decision to go to war can be made
without a Congressional Declaration of War. There was no such
Page 32
declaration with respect to the U.S. Government waging war on the
Korean peninsula.
There is a provision in the UN Charter, Article 43(3) which states
that member states participating in military actions under Chapter 7 of the
UN Charter are obliged to have such actions “subject to the signatory
states in accordance with their respective constitutional processes,”
In his article “The Korean War: On What Legal Basis Did Truman
Act?” Louis Fisher who is a specialist in Constitutional Law, points to the
constitutional violation represented by Truman’s sending U.S. troops to
the Korean War.
Truman used as an illegitimate excuse that the act had been
authorized by the UN Security Council. Fisher’s article describes the
extensive debate in the U.S. Congress before joining the UN to consider
if it was appropriate for the U.S. government to claim that a Security
Council resolution justified bypassing U.S. Constitutional obligations.
In his appearance before the House Committee on Foreign Relations
then Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson explained that “only after the
President receives the approval of Congress is he ‘bound to furnish that
contingent of troops to the Security Council’.”
17
Not only did Truman commit troops and aid to South Korea before
the Security Council called it a military action, but more importantly, no
action of the Security Council authorizes the U.S. government to violate
the U.S. Constitution. For the U.S. government to wage war, the U.S.
Constitution requires that the U.S. Congress make the decision that
authorizes that war.
Though other artifices were employed to evade U.S. Constitutional
obligation, such as calling the Korean War a “police action,” U.S. Courts
rejected such subterfuges.
18
Responding to these subterfuges, Vito Marcantonio, the American
Congressman from N.Y. for the American Labor Party said, “When we
agreed to the United Nations Charter we never agreed to supplant our
Constitution with the United Nations Charter. The power to declare and
make war is vested in the representations of the people, in the Congress of
the United States.
19
Commenting on this same situation, Justice Felix Frankfurter argued,
“Illegality cannot attain legitimacy through practice. Presidential acts of
Page 33
war, including Truman’s initiative in Korea can never be accepted as
constitutional or as a legal substitute for Congressional approval.”
20
Notes:
1. See, for example: Jay Hauben, “Is the UN Role in Korea 1947-1953 the Model Being
Repeated Today?”
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/UN-Role-in-Korea.doc.
2. I. F. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War, New York, 1952, p. 75. By August
1, 1950, the Soviet Union had returned to the Security Council ending its 6-month boycott
and so there were no further UN resolutions authorized by the Security Council
supporting UN participation in the Korean War.
3. See for example: Ronda Hauben, “U.S. Misrepresents its Role in Korean War and in
Armistice Agreement as UN Command,” taz blogs, June 26, 2013. http://blogs.taz.de
/netizenblog/2013/06/26/us-misrepresents-its-role-as-un-command. (No longer
Available.)
4. Press conference June 21, 2013, Ambassador Sin Son Ho at the UN.
http://webtv.un.org/media/press-conferences/watch/ambassador-sin-son-ho-the-
permanent-representative-of-the-democratic-peoples-republic-of-korea-to-the-un-press-
conference/2498682301001. (No Longer Available.) A text version of the statement
presented is online at: http://www.4thmedia.org /2013/06/26/ (No Longer Available.)
illegitimacy-and-injustice-of-the-un-command-in-south-korea-dprk-calls-for-its-
immediate-dissolution/ (No Longer Available.)
5. James F. Schnabel, United States Army in the Korean War Policy and Direction: The
First Year, available at:
https://www.history.army.mil/html/books/020/20-1/CMH_Pub_20-1.pdf. See p. 102, f/n
6 “Memo, JCS for Secy. Defense, 9 Jul. 50, sub: Designation of a United Nations Unified
Comdr by the United States.”
6. James W. Houck, “The Command and Control of United Nations Forces in the Era of
‘Peace Enforcement’,” Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law, vol. 4, No
1, 1993.
7. See Houck, p. 13 f/n 51.
8. Trygve Lie, In the Cause of Peace, New York, p. 334.
9. Houck, p. 12. “None of the resolutions (referring to the June and July S.C. resolutions
-ed),” writes Houck, provided for Security Council control over the ensuing operation
despite the fact that it would be conducted under Security Council authorization.”
10. See Articles 42, 44, 46 and 48 of the UN Charter. These articles authorize the Security
Council to use force. There is no article in Chapter 7 of the UN Charter which authorizes
the Security Council to cede political decision making to a member state to carry out a
Chapter 7 action.
11. Schnabel, p. 103, Rad, WAR 85743, DA to CINCFE, Jul. 12, 50.
12. Schnabel, p. 104, f/n 10. See MacArthur Hearings, p. 10.
13. Lie, p. 334.
Page 34
14. Daily Press Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General,
June 21, 2013. http://www.un.org/News/brief ings/docs/2013/db130621.doc.htm. (No
Longer Available.)
15. E-mail received from Eduardo del Buey on June 25, 2013.
16. See I. F. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War, New York, 1952, p. 75.
17. Louis Fisher, “The Korean War: On What Legal Basis Did Truman Act?,” American
Journal of International Law, Jan. 1995. (89 Am J. Int’l L. 21), p. 30.
18. Fisher, p. 34.
19. Fisher, p. 35.
20. Fisher, p. 38.
*https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-role-of-the-un-in-the-unending-korean-war-united-
nations-command-as-camouflage/5350876
[Editors’ note: The following article appeared in OhmyNews International on June 17,
2009]
Overseas Koreans Remember 6.15 Joint
Declaration
by Ronda Hauben
Though the Sunshine Policy that has officially guided the struggle
for Korean Reunification since June 15, 2000 (6.15)
1
may be under siege
by the current government of South Korea, the U.S. government, and the
United Nations Security Council, it was very much alive at the Overseas
Koreans Conference for Peace and Reunification of Korea held in Wash-
ington, D.C. The conference, marking the 9
th
anniversary of the historic
agreement between the Heads of State of North and South Korea, was held
on June 12-14, 2009.
It was with a sigh of relief that I left New York on Friday morning
June 12 to travel to Washington, D.C. where the June 15 Joint Korea
Declaration Overseas Committee for Peace and Reunification of Korea
was hosting this three-day event.
At noon, in New York City on Friday, June 12, the United Nations
Security Council passed SC Resolution 1874 imposing harsh sanctions
Page 35
against North Korea. The voice of reason has been drowned out in a sea
of “waiting for Obama” sentiment, giving the Obama administration
license to continue and even outdo the anti-democratic policies of the
Bush administration.
For example, Obama’s administration has increased the U.S. troop
level in Afghanistan and encouraged extensive military actions displacing
the civilian population in Pakistan. But when it comes to North Korea,
U.S. government policy has been especially harsh. This has been
documented in an earlier article in OhmyNews International: “U.S. Policy
Toward North Korea Fails to Engage.” Page 19 in this issue.
The presentations and discussion at the 6.15 anniversary conference
helped to put what is happening at the UN into the bigger framework of
U.S., Korean relations and North Korea-South Korea relations.
2
This broad
focus is one where several generations of Koreans have grown up since the
rivalry between U.S. and Soviet Union following World War II, imposed
arbitrary separation on the Korean Peninsula.
“ T h e
separation itself is
violent,” explained
Park Soh-eyn, the
first speaker at the
Saturday morning
panel, who came to
the conference
from Germany.
She observed that
t h e J u n e 1 5
Declaration had a
significant symbolic effect. It provided a common approach toward
reunification for both North Korea and South Korea. After 60 years of
separation, just to be able to look at the North Korean and South Korean
flags in the same space was touching, she recalled.
Part of the impact in South Korea of the 6.15 Joint Declaration was
to legalize discussions of reunification which had been previously
forbidden and criminalized by the South Korea National Security Law.
The 6.15 Declaration had also broadened the reunification movement so
Conference participants
Page 36
that people from different sectors of society participated, including diverse
religious organizations, and diverse non-religious organizations including
conservative and progressive political groups. Park Soh-eyn pointed out
that there have been many exchanges between the Koreas since the 6.15
Joint Declaration.
Park Soh-eyn offered the analogy that if we consider the separation
like a disease with its harmful effects, the reunification process provides
a medication, with curing qualities.
On Friday evening of the first day of the conference there had been
a short set of talks at the dinner held at a Korean restaurant in Tysons
Corner, Virginia. U.S. Congressman Eni Faleomavaega of American
Samoa, who is the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee on Asia,
the Pacific and the Global Environment, gave a short presentation about
his support for the Sunshine Policy
3
and his respect for the work done by
former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung.
I was invited to present a greeting at the dinner. I described how as
a featured writer for OhmyNews International, I have reported on UN
events, particularly focusing on the frustrations among delegates and
others with the actions of the UN Security Council. I noted the widespread
feeling that there is a need for an English language publication to counter
media myths as about North Korea.
Another talk at the Saturday Conference was presented by Kim
Chang-soo, who had been on the South Korean National Security Council
in the Roh Moo-hyun administration. Kim Chang-soo reviewed some of
the recent events in the relations between the two Koreas. President Lee
Myung-bak has not recognized the June 15, 2000 or October 4, 2007
agreements with North Korea negotiated by the previous two
governments. The Lee regime, in abandoning the Sunshine policy, turned
to criticizing North Korea as well as conducting military exercises with the
U.S. that are viewed as hostile activities by North Korea.
The media has focused on internal problems in North Korea, failing
to take into account broader issues and context. North Korea has indicated
it is willing to talk about the nuclear issues with the U.S. on a one to one
basis, which would include talking about U.S. protection of South Korea
under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Kim Chang-soo proposed that North
Korea is trying to get diplomatic recognition from the U.S. as well as to
Page 37
address its economic issues. But the current world media focuses on
problems with North Korea, rather than why the U.S. is not doing anything
to encourage negotiations.
Kim Chang-soo suggested that the upcoming summit between Lee
Myung-bak and Barack Obama was important and has the potential to
have serious military implications. He cautioned against Obama failing to
realize that Lee Myung-bak is considered as a repressive dictator and that
there is a long tradition of the U.S. government supporting dictatorial
regimes in South Korea. Such support for Lee Myung-bak by the U.S.
government would remind the people of South Korea of this past history,
including the resentment that spread across South Korea in 2002 when two
middle school girls were killed by a U.S. military tank. Kim Chang-soo
advised Obama to keep this all in mind when he meets the President of
South Korea.
Kim Chang-soo offered some observations about the current tense
situation created between the U.S. and North Korea by U.S. support for the
harsh Security Council Resolution that has recently passed at the UN. He
referred to several analogous periods when the U.S. made progress in
normalizing relations. One such example was when China and the U.S.
began to normalize relations in the early 1970s. Similarly despite the
hostility of the Bush administration years, negotiations with North Korea
began in earnest toward the latter part of Bush’s tenure in office.
The current sanctions, against North Korea, are problematic. They
even go beyond the mandate of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI)
that in itself has the potential to provoke military encounters. The Security
Council’s sanctions present a contradiction with the Armistice Agreement
between North Korea and the UN Command, which forbids one side from
blockading the other side. The provision to forcibly inspect North Korean
ships contradicts the terms of the Armistice, as do the provisions cutting
off financial interactions with North Korea.
Kim Chang-soo observed that Obama’s policy is similar to Bush’s
earlier policy. We need to ask for a fresh policy approach from the Obama
administration, he suggested. He advised that there is a need for a very
special high level envoy to go to North Korea to change the direction.
Also he proposed that an exchange of cultural events and people to people
interactions could be helpful.
Page 38
For the upcoming meeting between the U.S. and South Korean
presidents, Kim Chang-soo proposed that relations with North Korea need
to address not only denuclearization, but also diplomatic recognition, inter
Korea exchanges, and forging peace in Northeast Asia. Kim Chang-soo
advised that Lee Myung-bak recognize the significance of the June 15
Declaration and continue to implement that spirit and to promote this spirit
when he meets with Obama, rather than a tough military approach to
North Korea.
In thinking about the impact of the events at the conference, it seems
that U.S. and North Korean relations are at a particularly low point with
the danger of a military confrontation. At such a time, it is particularly
important to consider the achievements of the Sunshine Policy and the
6.15 Joint Declaration as a means to support peace and reunification,
rather than war, on the Korean Peninsula.
The continuing tragedy of the two Koreas is a serious problem for
the world, not just for the Korean people. Also the U.S. government’s
refusal to negotiate a peace treaty to end the Korean war means that there
is a particularly dangerous situation on the Korean Peninsula. The
Armistice is but a temporary truce, not a means of more permanently
preventing a return to military action.
A number of conversations at the conference, however, emphasized
that people in Korea have faced many hardships over the years so that this
difficult time is not unusual for them.
One speaker on Friday evening summing up this sentiment admitted,
“I feel sometimes hopeless.” But along with this sentiment, he explained
his belief that there is a basis for hope. He reminded those at the
conference, “But our people have been through so many hardships … . We
shouldn’t be passive. As our voices get bigger, we’ll get more power. We
shouldn’t appeal to Lee Myung-bak. We should appeal to the people.”
Notes:
1. From June 13 to June 15, 2000, an inter-Korean summit between South Korean
president Kim Dae-jung and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s supreme leader
Kim Jong-il took place in Pyongyang. It was the first inter-Korean summit since the
Korean War 1950-1953. On the last day of the summit, the June 15
th
(6.15) North–South
Joint Declaration was adopted between leaders of North Korea and South Korea. See
Page 39
/sites/default/files/content/resources/publications/South-North_Joint_Dec_2000.pdf .
2. Most of the talks presented at the conference and dinner were in Korean. This account
of the conference is based on translations from Korean into English provided by several
colleagues.
3. During the South Korean presidency of Kim Dae-jung, a national security policy was
adopted known as the Sunshine Policy. The national security policy had three basic
principles: (1) No military provocation from the North will be accepted; (2) The South
will not attempt to annex or occupy the North in any way; (3) The South will actively
seek peace and mutual partnership with the North. For example, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /Sunshine_Policy.
[Editors’ note: The following article appeared in OhmyNews International on June 12,
2009]
U.S. Policy Toward North
Korea Fails to Engage
by Ronda Hauben
U.S. policy toward North Korea since Barack Obama assumed the
U.S. presidency is very different from the promises of engagement which
he made during his election campaign. This policy presents a striking
example of the disparity between pre election promises and the action
taken thus far during the Obama presidency.
On the first day of the new administration, sanc-tions were
authorized against three North Korean firms under the Arms Export
Control Act, along with several nonproliferation executive orders. The
three firms were KOMID, which had been sanctioned by other
administrations, Sino-Ki and Moksong Trading Company, which were
being sanctioned for the first time.
1
The hostile direction of Obama’s policy, however, has been signaled
most clearly by the change made when the new administration failed to
reappoint Christopher Hill to his position as Undersecretary of State for
East Asia and the head of the U.S. negotiation team for the six-party talks
with North Korea.
Page 40
Not only was Hill not reappointed, but the role of U.S. negotiator
with North Korea was downgraded and split among several different
officials. A part time position was created for an envoy. Another person
would be the U.S. representative to the six-party talks. And still another
official was to be appointed to the position of Undersecretary of State for
East Asia, which was Hill’s former position.
Stephen Bosworth accepted the position as envoy. His official title
is Special Representative for North Korea Policy. Bosworth did so on a
part time basis. At the same time, he maintained his full time position as
Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University
along with his new part time job.
There has been little public discussion about why the Obama
administration made such significant changes. The Boston Globe, in an
article about Bosworth’s appointment, refers to the concerns expressed by
Leon Sigal, the director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project
at the Social Science Research Council in New York. The article quotes
Sigal saying that there are officials in the new administration, “who don’t
think we can get anywhere, so they don’t want to do the political heavy
lifting to try.”
2
In contrast to the loss of Hill as a negotiator with North Korea, the
Obama administration reappointed Stuart Levey, as the Undersecretary of
Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Levey’s office in the
Treasury Department, was created in 2004 under George W. Bush. This
office was used to impose econ-omic sanctions on North Korea. One such
action was the freezing of funds that North Korea had in a bank in Macao,
China, the Banco Delta Asia (BDA).
North Korea was not only denied access to U.S. $25 million, but it
was also denied the use of the international banking system. This freezing
of North Korean funds was announced shortly after North Korea and the
five other nations who were part of the six-party talks signed the
September 19, 2005 agreement to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
3
The
announcement by the Treasury Department sabotaged the implementation
of this important agreement which would have gone a long way toward the
goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. North Korea withdrew from
the six-party talks until the $25 million was returned.
4
It is significant here to note that Levey and his office briefly came
Page 41
under public scrutiny in 2006 when the New York Times published an
article exposing how the office has access to and uses the SWIFT Data
Base to do intelligence work targeting people and transactions that it
claims are in violation of U.S. law.
5
The SWIFT Data Base contains the
transactions and identification information for the hundreds of thousands
of people and entities that do electronic banking transactions using the
SWIFT system.
The action by the U.S. Treasury using a section of the Patriot Act
against the Banco Delta Asia Bank, however, demonstrated that the U.S.
government has the ability to use this data base information against those
it wants to target politically, rather than those who have committed any
actual illegal acts. Testimony by former U.S. government officials to the
U.S. Congress, and documents submitted to the U.S. government by the
bank owner and his lawyer, demonstrated that there was never any
evidence offered of any illegal acts. Instead the Patriot Act had been used
to allow the U.S. government to act against this bank for political
objectives. (See “Behind the Blacklisting of Banco Delta Asia: Is the
policy aimed at targeting China as well as North Korea?” See page 8 in
this issue.)
The new positions, designated to negotiate with North Korea, are at
a lower administrative level than was Hill’s former position. In addition,
the Obama administration, by not reappointing Hill, has lost his valuable
expertise. Hill had effectively countered the sabotage to negotiations
caused by Levey’s office during the Bush administration.
Hill was met with opposition from some in the Bush administration
at each step along the way. Remarkably, Hill effectively countered much
of this opposition, making progress in the negotiations. In August 2008,
however, the Bush administration uni-laterally changed what it claimed
North Korea’s obligations were as part of Phase 2 of the six-party Feb
2007 agreement, and falsely declared that North Korea was in violation.
6
With Hill gone from the North Korean desk at the State Department,
and Levey reappointed to his position at the Treasury Department, it is
significant that Obama sent an inter-agency group to visit the capitals of
Japan, South Korea and China to discuss punishments for North Korea.
Levey was featured as one of the U.S. government officials on the trip.
But is punishment appropriate? There has been no similar effort to
Page 42
open negotiations with North Korea.
Instead, the U.S. administration has given its support to Levey and
others whose actions have sabotaged the success of the six-party talks.
This failure of the Obama administration is similar to previous U.S. policy
on North Korea.
Robert Carlin, part of the U.S. government negotiation team with
North Korea under the Clinton Administration, documents that there were
significant and successful negotiations on 22 issues carried out in the
period between 1993 and 2000.
7
These achievements, however, could not
survive into the transition to the Bush Administration.
Similarly, Mike Chinoy, a former CNN journalist, in his book
Meltdown, documents both the Clinton years and much of the Bush years.
He chronicles how negotiations were torpedoed not by North Korea, but
by forces within the U.S. government itself.
8
In addition, the U.S. conducts frequent military maneuvers close to
North Korea which North Korea has claimed as a threat to its peace and
security.
On April 5, 2009, North Korea test launched a communications
satellite using a rocket of advanced design. This test broke no international
law or treaty to which North Korea is a party.
9
Still the launch was
condemned by the UN Security Council in a Presidential Statement. Also
new sanctions were imposed on North Korea, stating as authority, a
previous Security Council Resolution 1718.
10
North Korea has been the target of hostile acts by the U.S. North
Korea has tested rockets and has done tests of two nuclear devices, which
it claims it needs as a deterrent. The U.S. has military agreements with
Japan and South Korea, including them under the protection of the U.S.
nuclear umbrella. There is only an armistice ending the fighting of the
Korean War. The U.S. as the head of the UN command has not been
willing to negotiate a treaty ending the Korean War.
The failure of the UN Security Council to explore North Korea’s
problems in trying to check U.S. hostility demonstrates its failure to carry
out its obligations under the UN charter. The failure of the Security
Council to protect Iraq from U.S. invasion is a warning that the Security
Council should reform its processes so that it doesn’t just become a
vehicle for the political targeting of a nation as happened with Iraq.
11
Page 43
In his comments to journalists in response to the sanctions put on
North Korea in April 2009, the Deputy Ambassador to the UN from North
Korea, Pak Tok Hun said, “The recent activity of the security council
concerning the peaceful use of outer space by my country shows that
unless the security council is totally reformed and democratized we expect
nothing from it.”
12
The challenge to the nations of the UN is to provide a more neutral
and considered investigation of the problem it is trying to solve rather than
just carrying out the punishment a P-5 nation may endeavor to inflict on
another nation.
Notes:
1. Karin Lee and Julia Choi, “North Korea: Unilateral and Multilateral Economic
Sanctions and U.S. Department of Treasury Actions, 1955-April 2009,” National
Committee on North Korea, (Paper last updated April 28, 2009), p. 26.
http://nautilus org
/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/09035LeeChoi.pdf.
2. James F. Smith, “In role as envoy, Tufts dean carries hardearned lessons,” The Boston
Globe, May 26, 2009.
3. Ronda Hauben, “North Korea’s $25 Million and Banco Delta Asia: Another Abuse
under the U.S. Patriot Act,” OhmyNews International, March 3, 2007.
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no-351525&rel_no-1. (No
longer available.)
4. Ronda Hauben, “Behind the Blacklisting of Banco Delta Asia: Is the policy aimed at
targeting China as well as North Korea?,” OhmyNews International, Ma y 1 8 , 2 0 0 7.
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no-362192&rel_no-1 (No
longer available.)
5. Erick Lichtblau and James Risen, “Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block
Terror,” New York Times, June 23, 2006.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/washington/23intel.html.
6. Ronda Hauben, “U.S. Media and the Breakdown in the Six-Party Talks,” OhmyNews
_view.asp?no-383769&rel_no-1. (No longer available.)
7. Robert Carlin, “Negotiating with North Korea: Lessons Learned and Forgotten,” Korea
Yearbook 2007, Edited by Rudiger Frank et al., Brill, 2007, p. 235-251.
8. Mike Chinoy, Meltdown, St. Martin’s Press, 2008.
9. Ronda Hauben, “Controversy at UN Over North Korea’s Launch: Reconvening six-
party talks or penalizing Pyongyang?”, OhmyNews International, April 10, 2009.
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no-385061&rel_no-1. (No
Page 44
longer available.)
10. Ronda Hauben, “Security Council’s Ad Hoc Actions Increase Tension on Korean
Peninsula: [Analysis] North Korea responds by withdrawing from six-party talks as
/articleview/article_view.asp?no- 385093&rel_no-1. (No longer available.)
11. Seumas Milne, “After Iraq It’s Not Just North Korea that Wants a Bomb,” Guardian
Comment Is Free, May 29, 2009.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009
/may/27/north-korea-nuclear-weapons-us.
12. Pak Tok Hun, Informal Comments to the Media at the UN Media Stakeout, April 24,
longer available.)
[Editor’s note: The following article first appeared in OhmyNews International on June
8, 2010.]
Netizens Question Cause of Cheonan
Tragedy
Online media challenge claims that North Korea is
responsible for sinking the Cheonan
by Ronda Hauben
The South Korean government headed by Lee Myung-bak is trying
to dispel criticism that its accusation that North Korea is responsible for
the sinking on March 26 of the Cheonan warship is politically motivated
and a cover-up or possible false flag operation.
On May 20, the South Korean government presented as incontestable
fact its conclusion that the warship Cheonan split in two and sank because
of hostile action by North Korea. Online discussion seriously challenged
that presentation. Perhaps not coincidentally, May 20, the day of the
presentation coincided with the date when campaigning for the June 2
provincial and local elections was to officially begin.
The military communication logs show that the first message from
the Cheonan of trouble said “aground on rocks.” The ship was in shallow
waters. Similarly, numerous early statements by both South Korean and
U.S. officials assured the public that North Korea was not involved with
Page 45
the incident.
The rescue operation saved 58 of the crew members. Forty-six of the
104 members of the ship’s crew died as a result of the ship’s breaking in
two and sinking. Relatives of the sailors who died complained that the
rescue effort was inadequate and too late. Public criticism of the Lee
government grew regarding how it was handling the ship disaster. A so
called international group was charged with the task of assessing blame for
the disaster. That Joint Investigation Group (JIG) was under the Korean
military.
The Investigation
When the five page investigation statement
1
was presented on May
20, however, North Korea was accused of being the cause of the disaster.
The accusation was based on a part of a torpedo allegedly dredged up from
the sea which bore a supposed pen marked number on a rusted surface.
The sinking of the Cheonan occurred during a period when the U.S.
military and the South Korean military were conducting joint military
exercises named Key Resolve/Foal Eagle. The joint South Korean-U.S.
naval action involved several Aegis class warships which have the most
advanced computer and radar systems to track and guide weapons to find
and destroy enemy targets. The Cheonan was a patrol combat corvette
(PCC) specializing in anti-submarine warfare.
The investigation statement claims that somehow an undetected
North Korean submarine pierced a highly protected arena of U.S.-South
Korean military maneuvers and released a torpedo in shallow waters, and
then escaped totally undetected.
An article in the Korean newspaper Hankyoreh
2
points out the
unlikely scenario that “a North Korean submarine [would be able] to
infiltrate the maritime cordon at a time when security reached its tightest
level and without detection by the Cheonan.”
No evidence was presented as to the actual firing of the torpedo or
the actual presence of a North Korean submarine in the vicinity of the
Cheonan. There is no actual observation of a North Korean submarine in
the area of the Cheonan, despite the fact that there was sophisticated
surveillance equipment used for the military exercises. Also, the
shallowness of the sea where the Cheonan sunk, about 40 to 50 m. and the
Page 46
rocky bottom would make submarine travel near there almost impossible
The statement of the investigation is unsigned. The parties who
allegedly conducted the investigation are unnamed. Instead of facts to
document a basis for the accusations which might lead to war, a number
of allegations are followed by the statement that “There is no other
plausible explanation.”
Blogs and Other Online Media
The accusations made by the conservative media in South Korea
about North Korea have taken on a James Bond quality given the
mismatch between the reality of North Korean capability and the claims
being made of how it has been able to perform amazing deeds. Blogs and
other online media in both the U.S. and South Korea have presented facts
and discussion challenging the claims in the investigation statement, and
proposing other alternative explanations of the cause of the sinking of the
Cheonan. These online discussions and questions have begun not only to
supplement newspaper accounts but also to become the subject of
newspaper articles in South Korea.
Questions discussed on blogs included whether there was a North
Korean or German made torpedo involved in the sinking of the Cheonan,
or whether there was any involvement of a torpedo at all.
3
An online
letter
,,4
addressed to Hillary Clinton by one of the members of the
investigation, questions whether the marks on the ship came from being
run aground or a collision with some other vessel or both.
The Whole Story as a False Account?
The nature of the pen mark on the torpedo part offered by South
Korea as its main evidence that the torpedo was fired by North Korea was
challenged
5
as not being a reliable piece of evidence of North Korean
involvement because there was rust under the pen mark. Also, the blades
of the offered evidence show a degree of corrosion that would usually
require far more time than the two months in the water as claimed.
Another blog
6
challenges the whole story of the South Korean
government as a false account like the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Some of
the Korean netizens and political activists who challenged the South Ko-
Page 47
rean government about the cause of the Cheonan sinking have been
referred to the prosecutor for charges.
7
The South Korean government has been cited
8
by both Frank La
Rue, UN Special Rapporteur for the Promotion and Protection of Freedom
of Opinion and Expression and Amnesty International for interfering with
the rights of South Korean citizens and netizens.
They Need Teeth
Given the growing set of questions about the South Korean
government account of the sinking of the Cheonan, the government has
invited
9
some chosen bloggers and twitter users to a session “to dispel any
doubts among the young that North Korea was behind the deadly attack,”
A Yonhap News Agency press release explains that it will select 20
twitter users, 10 defense bloggers and 30 college reporters “to take a trip
to Pyeongtaek naval port south of Seoul where the salvaged parts of
Cheonan are being kept.” The article explains that “The event is aimed at
removing skepticism among young Internet users who have raised doubts
in online communities about the results of a multinational investigation
that concluded North Korea downed the ship in a torpedo attack.”
Like in the case of 9/11, careful fact checking and examination of the
evidence by netizens has shown the South Korean government’s case for
the involvement of North Korea in the sinking of the Cheonan to be
unsustainable. Netizens are more and more able to act as watchdogs. But
they need teeth.
Notes:
1.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/20_05_10jigrep ort.pdf.
2. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/4218 56.html.
3. See the comments at the end of the Scott Creighton’s blog entry, “The Sinking of the
Cheonan: We are being lied to” May 24, 2010, http://willyloman.wordpress
.com/2010/05/24/the-sinking-of-the-cheonan-we-are-being-lied-to/. (No Longer Avil-
able.) Some selected comments are in the Appendix just below. Some of Scott Creighton's
article is quoted at:
https://thecommunists.org/2010/04/01/news/hands-off-korea-the-
sinking-of-the-cheonan/.
4. http://cafe419.daum.net/_c21_/bbs_search_read?grpid=11Ypb&mrpid=&fldid =JFBW
&content=P&contentval=0001q&page=1&prev_page=&firstbbsdepth=&lastbbsdepth
=&datanum=114®dt=&favorRegdate=&favorMode=&listSortType=&listnum=. (No
Page 48
Longer Available.)
5. http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/pcc-772-cheona n-photographic-
evidence-that-no-1-written-on -top-of-rust/. (No Longer Available.)
6.
http://gowans.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/the-sinking-of-the-ch eonan-another-gulf-of-
tonkin-incident/.
7. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid= 2921120. (No Longer Available.)
8.
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/opinion/docs/ROK-Press statement17052010.pdf
9. http:/ /english.yonhapnews. co.kr/national/2010/05/31/3/0301000000
AEN20100531003100315F.HTML (No Longer Available.)
Appendix
Some comments from Scott Creighton’s blog entry, “The Sinking of the Cheonan: We are
being lied to,” May 24, 2010. http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/the-sinking-
of-the-cheonan-we-are-being-lied-to/. (No Longer Available.)
6. Tim, on May 24, 2010 at 1:55 p.m. said: ‘The markings in Hangul, which reads “1?(or
No. 1 in English),” found inside the end of the propulsion section, is consistent with the
marking of a previously obtained North Korean torpedo.’ Now, just hang on a minute ?
a previously obtained NK torpedo? A previously obtained NK torpedo?? How many do
they have? Is it not beyond the realms of possibility that this ‘evidence’ did not originate
from NK at all. We really ought to demand the same level of ballistic forensics that apply
to crime scenes where ordinary firearms have been discharged. After all many more lives
could be at stake here.
-------------------------------------------
57. Mika, on May 27, 2010 at 5:34 a.m. said: You may want to have a look at this:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LE26 Dg01.html. (No Longer Available.) I’ve not
tried verifying any of the claims made there yet, but the comments about the Korean
handwritten writings are damning if true, and if there was indeed still a large scale
exercise going on, that makes it completely unthinkable a NK sub would have penetrated
that deep, sank the Cheonan and got away again. OTOH, it does provide a rather credible
alternative scenario: a friendly fire incident blamed on the North Koreans. Kursk anyone?
----------------------------
145. willyloman, on May 28, 2010 at 3:38 p.m. said: the following comment was left by
a reader and it did not go through so I am posting it here so that others may read it. Mr.
Serandos: WordPress sometimes has problems with comments … it should work fine but
if posting again presents a problem, just me know. thank you
scott creighton, willyloman
Tom Serandos left the following comment: I tried to leave the following message on Mr.
Creighton’s site but I don’t think it went through.
PCC-772 report: I agree with the contents of the report.
Examine the photographs of the PCC-772 props. The deformation on each fluke is
Page 49
evidence of grounding while making turns. If there was an explosion it occurred after the
ship ran aground or only the lower flukes would have been damaged when it settled to the
bottom. The damage to the shaft alleys would have locked up the props.
If there was an explosion perhaps it was an unexploded bomb from the Korean war or a
mine the S. Koreans have not retrieved (reportedly there are over 100 of those still out
there). It could have been in the vessels path when it grounded.
Also, the degree of corrosion on the torpedo parts indicates they have been in the sea for
a very long time (months). It was long enough for the active alloy in the props to set up
a galvanic cell with the other parts. I am a degreed metallurgist with 25 years of
experience and seven years of service in the U.S. Nuclear Navy.
Tom Serandos
--------------------------------------------
166. Han Kim, on May 29, 2010 at 7:30 a.m. said: I’m Korean and many Korean ppl
know the govt is making things up.
As you might know, the only reason the govt manipulated the truth is to get more votes
on the upcoming election from the old generations. :) Keep up the good work! We really
appreciate the voices from outside Korea
----------------------
203. ??, on May 29, 2010 at 2:22 p.m. said:
Dear Scott,
have you seen this article, “Did an American Mine Sink South Korean Ship?” by one
Yoichi Shimatsu: http://newamericamedia. org/2010/05/did-an-american-mine-sink-the-
south-korean-ship.php. (No Longer Available.)
He makes many good points, what I’d like to highlight is what he says about the type of
torpedo submitted as evidence on May 20:
“Since torpedoes travel between 40-50 knots per hour (which is faster than collision tests
for cars), a drive shaft would crumble upon impacting the hull and its bearing and struts
would be shattered or bent by the high-powered blast … .”
My point is that even more bewildering than the various torpedo schema we’ve seen is
the very implausible situation that such a relatively intact remnant of the alleged weapon
exists as foisted onto us.
North Korea is also now vigorously bringing forth their defense, which is
comprehensively exposing the various contradictions in the “JIG” case. See my link of
“Military Commentator on Truth behind ‘Story of Attack by North’ (Part 1).”
http://tinyurl .com/29eh9zj The KCNA site won’t link directly, so I’m linking to the
article on my own blog.
People are going to cry about giving North Korea a hearing but they are certainly innocent
until proven guilty and their exclusion from the investigation process indicates weakness
and fear of exposure in the South Korean position, which has been relying so far on a kind
of international kangaroo court or media lynching. I’d very much like to see what
evidence they presented at their own press briefing recently to contrast with the “JIG”
press event of May 20. Again people will virulently impugn and dismiss them, but you
can be sure both Russia and China were paying close attention to all the details of their
Page 50
nearer neighbor’s case.
It’s also important for your morale to know that South Korean citizens groups and
progressive media are banding together as we speak to get to the bottom of this particular
Big Lie. Also Mr. Shin is saying he’ll use the suppressive court proceedings initiated
against him to expose the whole phony deal.
Don’t lose sight of the big picture, you’ve taken some “below-the-belt” hits? hang in there
man!
-------------------------------
211. hankyul moon, on May 30, 2010 at 11:16 a.m. said:
The kr.gov will keep trying to paint with dirty mentions in order to wrap this page.
In addition of that, the kr.gove will keep change their story and evidence, which is a
traditional judgment of suspicion. Many people focused on the torpedo; however, a single
evidence is not correlated to the explosion. The torpedo that kr.gov presented is not
proven evidence of explosion scientifically. For example, there are no proofs of thermal
effects, mechanical damages by explosion, corrosion effects by salty water, and corrosion
effects by heat and salty water. Only one evidence is letter “1?”, written by bright blue
permanent marker. Nevertheless, North kr.gov denied using “1?” on machinery.
[Editor’s note: The following article first appeared in OhmyNews International in June
2010.]
Questioning Cheonan
Investigation Stirs Controversy
by Ronda Hauben
South Korean government officials have denounced an NGO for
writing to the Security Council. The NGO is one of the most prominent
civil society organizations in South Korea, People’s Solidarity for
Participatory Democracy (PSPD). Such action disregards the long tradition
and established procedure at the United Nations for an NGO or private
individual to send communication to the Security Council on matters it is
considering.
PSPD is a watchdog NGO that was founded in 1994. Since then it
has monitored the actions of the South Korean government, supporting the
efforts of South Korean citizens to participate in political affairs.
In a letter asking for support, PSPD writes:
1
PSPD believes that diplomacy and security policy should be
Page 51
under the citizenry’s watch and democratic control. National
Security and diplomatic policy should not be monopolized by
military and diplomatic authorities.
On June 11, 2010, the Center for Peace and Disarmament of PSPD
sent a letter to UN Security Council President Claude Heller, the Mexican
Ambassador to the UN. Mexico holds the rotating presidency of the
Security Council for the month of June. With its letter, PSPD included its
report, “The PSPD’s Stance on the Naval Vessel Cheonan Sinking.”
2
The letter and report were also sent to the other fourteen member
states of the United Nations Security Council, to the United Nations
Secretary General and to the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea
(South Korea).
The PSPD report raised a number of questions and problems with the
findings presented by the South Korean government of its investigation of
the Cheonan sinking.
Background
The South Korean government, unable to win support domestically
for its allegations that North Korea was responsible for the sinking of the
Cheonan, turned to the UN Security Council for action against North
Korea.
3
On June 4 the South Korean Ambassador at the UN submitted a
letter to the UN Security Council requesting it to take up the matter of the
sinking of the Cheonan.
4
On June 8, North Korea submitted a letter to the Security Council
denying any involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan.
5
The Security Council scheduled an informal meeting for South
Korea to present its case against North Korea on Monday, June 14.
Initially there was no plan for the Security Council to meet with the North
Korean delegation on the Cheonan issue. On Sunday evening, however,
news reports from South Korea announced that on June 14, the Security
Council would also hold an informal meeting with North Korea.
According to some of the South Korean news media who cover the
UN, the big story in South Korea on Monday, June 14, was not that South
Korea was making its presentation to the Security Council. Instead the
media described denunciations by South Korean government officials
against PSPD for sending its report to the UN. The reporters claimed the
Page 52
South Korean government believed that the PSPD report influenced the
North Korean UN delegation to request a presentation at the UN Security
Council on the subject of the Cheonan. There was no proof presented for
such allegations. This did not, however, stop South Korean government
officials from making accusations against PSPD, nor the South Korean
conservative media from supporting the denunciations with articles
accusing the NGO of unpatriotic behavior.
6
In Seoul, on June 14, the spokesman for the Blue House, for the
President of South Korea, Lee Myung bak, publicly denounced PSPD.
Also on June 14, during the Question and Answer time at the
National Assembly, the South Korean Prime Minister, Un-Chan Chung,
denouncing PSPD for sending its letter and report to the UN Security
Council, said, “ Such actions are against national interest. It (PSPD’s
action) dishonored and shamed our country.”
Back at UN headquarters in New York on Monday, June 14, two
separate informal meetings of the Security Council were held in the North
Lawn Building. A large number of reporters waited in the cafe outside the
area where the Security Council was meeting because the meetings were
closed to the press.
After the two informal Security Council meetings, the Mexican
Ambassador spoke briefly to the press. He said, “the Security Council
issued a call to the parties to refrain from any act that could escalate
tensions in the region, and makes an appeal to preserve peace and stability
in the region.” He also indicated that the Security Council would continue
its consultations after the meetings it had with the delegations of both
nations. Heller said that it was very important to have received the very
detailed presentation by South Korea and also to know and learn from the
arguments of North Korea. He commented that it was “very important that
North Korea has approached the Security Council.” In response to a
question about his view on the issues presented, he responded, “I am not
a judge. I think we will go on with the consultations to deal in a proper
manner on the issue.”
7
The North Korean UN delegation scheduled a press conference for
the following day, Tuesday, June 15. During the press conference, the
North Korean Ambassador presented North Korea’s refutation of the
allegations made by South Korea. Also he explained North Korea’s
Page 53
request to be able to send an investigation team to go to the site where the
sinking of the Cheonan occurred. South Korea had denied the request.
During the press conference, a reporter with a South Korean newspaper
asked the North Korean Ambassador if he had received a copy of the
PSPD document from PSPD. The Ambassador responded that not to his
knowledge.
8
In a press release, the Asian Human Rights Commission writes that
following the denunciation of PSPD by South Korean government
officials, “the country’s Prosecutor’s office reportedly leaked to news-
papers that there was a possibility that the staff of the PSPD might be
prosecuted under the National Security Act, if a case were to be filed …
.”
9
“In response,” the press release explains, “conservative groups filed
a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office.” On June 15, the Vice Minister
of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Mr. Chun Yeong-U said that, “A legal
examination is currently going on.”
Following the accusatory remarks by South Korean government
officials against PSPD, “people belonging to conservative groups
attempted to raid the offices of PSPD.” There are reports that members of
PSPD were assaulted verbally and physically, and threatening phone calls
were made to the PSPD offices.
In one incident, a van containing flammable material was driven up
to the building where PSPD offices are located. The police did not arrest
the perpetrators of these deeds. The Prosecutor, instead, opened an
investigation of PSPD.
On June 17, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission, the
case against PSPD was allocated to the Public Security Bureau 1, which
announced its intention to summon PSPD officials.
The Asian Human Rights Commission also reported that the
Prosecutor’s office “approached one of the experts who worked on the
government-led report in order for this expert to submit a complaint
concerning alleged criminal defamation by the NGO.”
South Korean government officials, supported by some of the South
Korean media, allege that it is an unusual practice for an NGO to send a
letter or report to the UN Security Council. Recently, a reporter asked a
government official, “Are there any cases that a NGO sends a contrast
Page 54
position paper against a government on the security issue.” Chun, Yung-
woo, the 2
nd
Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade responded, “I
have never heard that there are such NGOs, and document sent by a NGO
cannot be a UNSC document.”
NGO Communication to Security Council
Such an interchange demonstrates a serious lack of knowledge of
UN and particularly Security Council procedures. There is a long
established practice at the UN of NGO’s or private individuals sending
letters and documents to the Security Council on questions before the
Security Council. Most if not all of the matters before the Security Council
have to do with security issues.
Records at the UN show that the practice of sending such
correspondence to the Security Council dates back to 1946. This is the
date when the symbol S/NC/ was introduced as the symbol for
“Communications received from private individuals and non-government-
al bodies relating to matters of which the Security Council is seized.”
10
The Security Council has the practice of periodically publishing a list of
the documents it receives, the name and organization of the sender, and
the date they are received. The Provisional Rules of Procedure of the
Security Council states that the list is to be circulated to all representatives
on the Security Council. A copy of any communication on the list is to be
given to any nation on the Security Council that requests it.
There are over 450 such lists indicated in the UN records. As each
list can contain several or a large number of documents the Security
Council has received, the number of such documents is likely to be in the
thousands.
Under Rule 39 of the Council procedures, the Security Council may
invite any person it deems competent for the purpose to supply it with
information on a given subject. Thus the two procedures in the Security
Council’s provisional rules give it the basis to find assistance on issues it
is considering from others outside the Council and to consider the
contribution as part of its deliberation.
Appeals to End Witch Hunt Against PSPD
Page 55
Initiating a criminal investigation against a South Korean NGO or
citizen for what is a long existing practice and tradition with respect to the
UN Security Council, is a South Korean government action that is being
compared to the kind of “witch-hunts” that occurred during the period of
the 1950s in the U.S. which has come to be known as McCarthyism.
In contrast to the attack on PSPD by the South Korean government
and the conservative media, many NGOs and citizens in South Korea have
expressed their support for PSPD.
A group of 200 professors and other intellectuals in South Korea has
issued a statement calling for the end of the “witch hunt” against PSPD.
The statement explains that “PSPD had performed its innate duty and right
as a civic group.” The group calls for conservative groups to end their
irrational backward attacks on PSPD.
11
Also, the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, an
organization of 46 groups in Asia which includes PSPD, sent a petition to
Frank La Rue, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and
Protection of the Right of Opinion and Expression.
12
It asked the UN to
“advise the South Korean government to end the prosecutorial
investigation of PSPD.”
La Rue had visited South Korea on May 6-17, 2010. He issued a
press statement on May 17 documenting other examples of the abuse by
the South Korean government of the human rights of its citizens. He
referred to the obligation of South Korea to adhere to the provisions of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protecting the right
to freedom of expression.
13
While La Rue’s comments were made prior to the current South
Korean government attack on PSPD, Amnesty International has issued a
statement regarding the current situation.
14
It writes:
Amnesty International is deeply concerned about the Seoul
Central Prosecutor’s Office’s decision on Wednesday to
investigate the People’s Solidarity for Participatory
Democracy (PSPD) for sending a letter to the UN Security
Council questioning the results of the international inves-
tigation into the sinking of the South Korean navy vessel the
Cheonan. The civic group is accused of ‘benefitting’ North
Korea, in violation of the National Security Law, interfering
Page 56
with state’s acts and defamation.
The statement concludes, “Amnesty International is also concerned
that the National Security Law continues to be used to arbitrarily target
individuals or groups peacefully exercising their basic rights to freedom
of expression and association. Simply put, this law is used as a tool to
silence dissent.”
On Friday, June 18, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was
asked for his view of the current action by the prosecutor in South Korea
against an NGO for sending a letter to the Security Council. He responded,
“I will have to check. I’m not aware of that.... I don’t have a comment at
this time, but I may have to check and will get back to you later.”
15
He did
not get back to the journalist as of the publication date of this article.
Open Letter to Ban Ki-moon
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) appealed to Ban Ki-
moon. On June 24, it sent an Open Letter to Sec-Gen Ban Ki-moon about
the situation. In the letter it asks him:
16
… to take all necessary steps to ensure that the reprisals,
directly or indirectly attributable to the Republic of Korea, are
immediately halted against civil society groups that have
communicated with the UN. The AHRC appreciates the work
of the Secretary-General concerning reprisals and urges his
offices to include this case as part of efforts to protect civil
society members from facing attacks based on their
participation in the UN’s work.
The AHRC has also asked the High Commissioner for Human
Rights to intervene to “ensure that these reprisals are halted” and that the
recommendations of the Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression be
implemented in full and without delay. It also calls upon South Korea as
a member of the Human Rights Council to act to “uphold the highest
standards.”
PSPD as Political Watchdog
PSPD reports that the organization has increased its membership by
15% with 1600 new members joining since the attack by the South Korean
Page 57
government. Also, numerous individuals and organizations in Korea and
outside have sent letters and made statements in support of PSPD.
As a member of the international society, PSPD explains, “PSPD
will continuously make every effort to advance the universal goals of
democracy and peace through its activities as a political watchdog.”
17
Notes
1. “Stop Oppression and Prosecutor’s Investigation on PSPD,” 6/21/2010.
http://www.peoplepower21.org/English/40195.
2. PSPD, “The PSPD’s Stance on the Naval Vessel Cheonan Sinking,” June 1, 2010.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=http://knsi
.org/knsi/admin/work/works/s%2520stance%2520on%2520Sunken%2520Cheonan%2
520Warship.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiZt7nlwZCFAxVshYkEHZZIDpUQFnoECA0QAQ
&usg=AOvVaw0YmzlO3QQpO1xn7gox9YbO.
3. “What’s Behind South Korea Bringing the Cheonan Issue to the UN Security Council,”
6/7/2010. http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2010/06/07/whats_behind_south_korea
_bringing_the_cheonan_issue_to_the_un_security_council/. (No Longer Available.)
4. “Letter from the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Korea to the UN with
regard to the armed attack by North Korea on 26 May, 2010 against the Republic of
Korea’s navy ship the Cheonan, S/2010/281.”
http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/
c f / % 7 B 6 5 B F C F 9 B - 6 D 2 7 - 4 E 9 C - 8 C D 3 - C F 6 E 4 F F 9 6 F F 9 % 7 D / D P R K
%20S%202010%20281%20SKorea%20Letter%20and%20Cheonan%20Report.pdf.
5. “Letter dated 8 June 2010 from the Permanent Representative of the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea to the United Nations addressed to the President of the
=S/2010/294&Lang=E. (No Longer Available.)
6. See description in: Gwak Byeong-chan, “Which Country Do You Belong To?,”
Hankyoreh, June 16, 2010.
https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/english
_editorials/425906.html.
7. “Informal comments to the Media by the President of the Security Council and the
Permanent Representative of Mexico, H.E. Mr. Claude Heller on the Cheonan incident
(the sinking of the ship from the Republic of Korea) and on Kyrgyzstan.” June 14, 2010.
[Webcast: Archived Video – 5 minutes.]
http://webcast.
un.org/ramgen/ondemand/stakeout/2010/so100614pm3.rm. (No Longer Available.)
8. “Press Conference: H.E. Mr. Sin Son Ho, Permanent Representative of the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea to the United Nations, on the current situation in the Korean
Peninsula.” June 15, 2010. [Webcast: Archived Video – 58 minutes.]
http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/pressconference/2010/pc100615am.rm. (No
Longer Available.)
9. “An Open Letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon by the Asian
Human Rights Commission,” 6/25/2010.
Page 58
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/06/08/open-letter-secretary-general-ban-ki-moon.
10. See “United Nations Series Symbols: 1946-1996,” Dag Hammarskjold Library,
United Nations, New York, 1998, p. 234.
11. “Scholars Call for End to PSPD Witch Hunt,” Hankyoreh, June 22, 2010.
https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition /e_national/426832.html.
12. Forum-Asia Submits the Urgent Appeal on Threats of Prosecution against PSPD to
UN Rapporteur 6/21/2010.
https://www.peoplepower21.org/english/40190.
13. Frank La Rue, Rapporteur, “UN, Full Text of ROK Press Statement,” May 17, 2010.
http://www.peoplepower21.org/?module=file&act=procFileDownload &file_srl=40191
&sid=4db9d3a9ce23eab695e13dec947e1842&module_srl=37681. (No Longer
Available.)
14. “Amnesty International expresses its concern about the investigation on the PSPD,”
6/18/2010.
http://gaia-lovedream.blogspot.com/2010/06/amnesty-international-expresses-its.html.
15. “2010-06-18, New York: Secretary-General’s remarks to the media.”
https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/press-encounter/2010-06-18/secretary-generals-
remarks-media. (No Longer Available.)
16. “An Open Letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon by the Asian
Human Rights Commission,” 6/25/2010.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/06/08/open-letter-secretary-general-ban-ki-moon.
17. “Stop Oppression and Prosecutor’s Investigation of PSPD.”
http://www.peoplepower21.org/English/40195.
[Editor’s note: The following article first appeared on the netizenblog on May 9, 2010.]
In Cheonan Dispute UN Security
Council Acts in Accord with UN Charter
by Ronda Hauben
The challenge of Security Council reform has been on the agenda at
the United Nations for decades with little obvious effect on the workings
of the Security Council itself.
1
But what happens when an action of the Security Council is an
improvement over past Security Council practices and presents an
important model for conflict resolution in line with the obligations of the
Charter? Will there be recognition of the peaceful direction that the action
points in or will it be ignored and members of the Security Council revert
Page 59
back to the practice of the past?
The situation I am referring to is the consideration by the Security
Council of the sinking of the South Korean naval warship, the Cheonan.
The dispute over the sinking of the Cheonan was brought to the Security
Council in June and a Presidential Statement was agreed to in July.
An account of some of what happened in the Security Council during
an important part of this process is described in an article in Spanish that
has appeared in several different Spanish language publications. The
article, “Heller mediacion de Mexico en conflict de Peninsula de Corea”
by Maurizio Guerrero, the UN Correspondent for Notimex (the Mexican
News Agency), was published on July 5.
2
The article describes the
experience of the Mexican Ambassador to the UN, Claude Heller in his
position as president of the Security Council for the month of June.
In a letter to the Security Council dated June 4, the Republic of
Korea (ROK) more commonly known as South Korea, asked the Council
to take up the Cheonan dispute. Park Im-kook, the South Korean
Ambassador to the UN requested that the Security Council consider the
matter of the Cheonan and respond in an appropriate manner.
3
The letter
described an investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan carried out by
South Korean government and military officials. The conclusion was to
accuse North Korea of sinking the South Korean ship.
Sin Son Ho is the UN Ambassador from the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK), which is more commonly known as North
Korea. He sent a letter dated June 8 to the Security Council, which denied
the allegation that his country was to blame.
4
His letter urged the Security
Council not to be the victim of deceptive claims, as had happened with
Iraq in 2003. It asked the Security Council to support its call to be able to
examine the evidence and to be involved in a new and more independent
investigation on the sinking of the Cheonan.
How would the Mexican Ambassador as President of the Security
Council during the month of June handle this dispute? (The presidency
rotates each month to a different Security Council member.) This was a
serious issue facing Heller as he began his presidency in June 2010.
Heller adopted what he refers to as a “balanced” approach to treat
both governments on the Korean peninsula in a fair and objective manner.
He held bilateral meetings with each member of the Security Council
Page 60
which led to support for a process of informal presentations by both of the
Koreas to the members of the Security Council.
What Heller calls “interactive informal meetings” were held on June
14 with the South Koreans and the North Koreans in separate sessions
attended by the Security Council members, along with a time to ask
questions and then to discuss the presentations.
At a media stakeout on June 14, after the day’s presentations ended,
Heller said that it was important to have received the detailed presentation
by South Korea and also to know and learn the arguments of North Korea.
He commented that “it was very important that North Korea approached
the Security Council.” In response to a question about his view on the
issues presented, he replied, “I am not a judge. I think we will go on with
the consultations to deal in a proper manner on the issue.”
5
During June, Heller held meetings with the UN Ambassadors from
each of the two Koreas and then with Security Council members about the
Cheonan issue. On the last day of his presidency, on June 30, he was asked
by the media what was happening about the Cheonan dispute. He
responded that the issue of contention was over the evaluation of the South
Korean government’s investigation.
Heller describes how he introduced what he refers to as “an
innovation” into the Security Council process. As the month of June
ended, the issue was not yet resolved, but the “innovation” set a basis to
build on the progress that was achieved during the month of his
presidency.
The “innovation” Heller refers to, is a summary of the positions of
each of the two Koreas on the issue, taking care to present each
objectively. Heller explains that this summary was not an official
document, so it did not have to be approved by the other members of the
Council. This summary provided the basis for further negotiations. He
believed that it had a positive impact on the process of consideration in the
Council, making possible the agreement that was later to be expressed in
the Presidential statement on the Cheonan that was issued by the Security
Council on July 9.
Heller’s goal, he explains, was to “at all times be as objective as
possible” so as to avoid increasing the conflict on the Korean peninsula.
Such a goal is the Security Council’s obligation under the UN charter.
Page 61
In the Security Council’s Presidential Statement on the Cheonan,
what stands out is that the statement follows the pattern that Heller
described of presenting the views of each of the Koreas and urging that the
dispute be settled in a peaceful manner.
6
In the statement, the members of the Security Council do not blame
North Korea. Instead they refer to the South Korean investigation and its
conclusion, expressing their “deep concern” about the “findings” of the
investigation.
Analyzing the Presidential Statement, the Korean newspaper
Hankyoreh noted that the statement “allows for a double interpretation and
does not blame or place consequences on North Korea.”
7
Such a
possibility of a “double interpretation” allows different interpretations.
Some of the articles that have appeared in the English language
media about the Cheonan, however, appear to be oblivious to the effort to
accommodate the different viewpoints in the Presidential Statement. For
example, an editorial in the New York Times about the Presidential
Statement complained that the statement contained “weasel wording about
blame.”
8
An AP article reported that the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Susan
Rice, and the South Korean Ambassador, Park Im-kook said the
Presidential Statement “made clear who to blame” for the attack on the
Cheonan.
9
Instead of directly pointing out this is contrary to the wording
of the statement, however, the AP article notes that in private some
diplomats and analysts expressed concern that the statement didn’t blame
Pyongyang.
Another article in the New York Times, however, referred to a
statement of Li Baodong, China’s Ambassador to the UN, that the
Presidential statement moved matters in “the right direction” because it
urged “the parties concerned” to avoid escalating tensions.
10
Russia had sent a team of experts to South Korea to do its own
evaluation on the South Korean findings. Though the Russian evaluation
has not been released publicly, a leaked copy was the subject of articles in
Hankyoreh. These describe how the Russian team of experts disagreed
with the South Korean government’s conclusions about the sinking of the
Cheonan. The Russian experts observed the ship’s propeller had become
entangled in a fishing net and subsequently a possible cause of the sinking
Page 62
could have been that the ship had hit the antennae of a mine which then
exploded.
11
The Presidential Statement explains that “The Security Council takes
note of the responses from other relevant parties, including the DPRK,
which has stated that it had nothing to do with the incident.”
12
With the exception of the DPRK, it is not indicated who “the other
relevant parties” are. It does suggest, however, that it is likely some
Security Council members, not just Russia and China, did not agree with
the conclusions of the South Korean investigation.
The Security Council action on the Cheonan took place in a situation
where there has been a wide ranging international critique, especially in
the online media, about the problems of the South Korean investigation,
and of the ROK government’s failure to make public any substantial
documentation of its investigation, along with its practice of harassing
critics of the ROK claims.
The U.S. media, however, for the most part has chosen to ignore the
many critiques which have appeared. These critiques of the South Korean
government’s investigation of the Cheonan sinking have appeared not only
in Korean, but also in English, in Japanese, and in other languages. They
present a wide ranging challenge of the veracity and integrity of the South
Korean investigation and its conclusions.
An article in the Los Angeles Times on July 28 noted the fact that
the media in the U.S. has ignored the critique of the South Korean
government investigation that is being discussed and spread around the
world.
13
More recently, on August 31, an Op Ed by Donald Gregg, a
former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, appeared in the New York Times,
titled “Testing North Korean Waters.” The article noted that “not everyone
agrees that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea. Pyongyang has
consistently denied responsibility, and both China and Russia opposed a
UN Security Council resolution laying blame on North Korea.”
14
In a subsequent interview with the Washington correspondent for
Hankyoreh, Gregg adds that the Russian team’s conclusions could only be
tentative because they were not given access to all the materials they
needed for their investigation. The Russian team recommended that the
Chinese not make an effort to review the South Korean investigation.
They would likely not have access to all the materials needed to be able
Page 63
to do an adequate review.
In his Op Ed in the New York Times, Gregg maintains that, “The
disputed interpretations of the sinking of the Cheonan remain central to
any effort to reverse course and to get on track toward dealing effectively
with North Korea on critical issues such as the denuclearization of the
Korean Peninsula.” Therefore, he urges the South Korean government to
make public the study it has done.
Gregg’s public statements are just one example of the disagreement
around the world, along with the Chinese and Russian governments, with
the South Korean government’s conclusions about the sinking of the
Cheonan and about the process of the investigation itself.
North Korea referred to this widespread international sentiment in
its June 8 letter to the Security Council. The UN Ambassador from North
Korea wrote:
15
It would be very useful to remind ourselves of the ever-
increasing international doubts and criticisms, going beyond
the internal boundary of south Korea, over the ‘investigation
result’ from the very moment of its release … .
The situation that the North Korean Ambassador is referring to is
one marked by actions on the part of the South Korean netizens and civil
society who challenged the process and results of the South Korean
government’s investigation. There is support for the South Korean critics
by bloggers, scientists and journalists around the world, writing in a
multitude of languages and from many perspectives. A number of the non-
governmental organizations and scientists in South Korea sent the results
of their investigations and research to members of the Security Council to
provide them with the background and facts needed to make an informed
decision.
16
The result of such efforts is something that is unusual in the process
of recent Security Council activity. Most often decisions are made
according to the degree of power and self interest in the issue being
considered, rather than according to an impartial analysis of the problem
and an effort to hear from all those with an interest in the issue. But an
impartial analysis is what is required by the obligations of the UN Charter.
In its June 8 letter to the Security Council, North Korea referred to
the earlier experience of the Security Council, to the February 5, 2003
Page 64
Security Council meeting when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made
his presentation of his “evidence” that weapons of mass destruction
existed in Iraq. The U.S. then used these claims as the pretext for its
invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
17
The June 8 letter from North Korea urges:
It is imperative for the Security Council not to step into the
same situation in which it was once misused as a tool of high-
handedness and hegemony of the United States by giving
legitimacy to its armed invasion into Iraq, based on a single
word of lies of Powell, United States Secretary of State, in
February 2003.
The Security Council is duty bound to adhere strictly to the
principles of respect for the sovereignty and impartiality of
United Nations Member States, as enshrined in the Charter of
the United Nations.
The process of how the Security Council took up and determined its
response to the dispute on the Cheonan is an important example of a
different process than that which occurred in the Iraq situation. The effort
in the Security Council described by the Mexican Ambassador, to uphold
the principles of impartiality and respectful treatment of all members
involved in a problem.
The process instituted by the Mexican presidency of the Security
Council in June with respect to the Cheonan dispute has the potential of
providing for a significant precedent in the process of Security Council
reform. It represents an important example of the Security Council acting
in conformity with its obligations as set out in the UN charter.
In the July 9 Presidential Statement, the Security Council urges that
the parties to the dispute over the sinking of the Cheonan find a means to
peacefully settle the dispute. The statement says:
The Security Council calls for full adherence to the Korean
Armistice Agreement and encourages the settlement of
outstanding issues on the Korean peninsula by peaceful means
to resume direct dialogue and negotiation through appropriate
channels as early as possible, with a view to avoiding conflicts
and averting escalation.
Ambassador Gregg is only one of many around the world who have
Page 65
expressed their concern with the course of action of the U.S. and South
Korea which is contrary to the direction of the UN Security Council
Presidential Statement. Gregg explained his fear that the truth of the
Cheonan sinking “may elude us, as it did after the infamous Tonkin Bay
incident of 1964, that was used to drag us (the U.S.) into the abyss of the
Vietnam War.”
18
The Security Council Action on the Cheonan dispute, if it is
recognized and supported, has set the basis instead for a peaceful
resolution of the conflict.
19
Notes:
1. Ronda Hauben, “UN Security Council Reform in Focus,” OhmyNews International,
September 15, 2008.
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=383668&rel_no=1. (No
Longer Available.)
2. Maurizio Guerrero, “Heller mediacion de Mexico en conflict de Peninsula de Corea,”
/2010/07/05/69561.(No Longer Available.)
3. Security Council, S/2010/281, “Letter dated 4 June 2010.”
http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-
C F 6 E 4 F F 9 6 F F 9 % 7 D / D P R K % 2 0 S % 2 0 2 0 1 0 % 2 0 2 8 1 % 2 0 S K o r e a % 2 0
Letter%20and%20Cheonan%20Report.pdf.
4. Security Council, S/2010/294, June 8, 2010 Letter.
http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-
CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/Nkorea%20S%20 2010%20294.pdf.
5. Ambassador Claude Heller at the June 14 stakeout. “Media Stakeout: Informal com-
ments to the Media by the President of the Security Council and the Permanent
Representative of Mexico, H.E. Mr. Claude Heller on the Cheonan incident (the sinking
of the ship from the Republic of Korea) and on Kyrgyzstan.” [Webcast: Archived Video
– 5 minutes.] http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/stakeout/2010 /so100614pm3.rm.
(No Longer Available.)
6. UN Security Council, S/PRST/2010/13. http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view _doc.asp
?symbol=S/PRST/2010/13. (No Longer Available.)
7. Lee Jae-hoon,“Presidential Statement allows for a ‘double interpretation, and does not
blame or place consequences upon N. Korea,” Hankyoreh, July 10, 2010.
www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/429768.html.
8. “Security Council Blinks,” Editorial, New York Times, July 10, 2010.
9. Edith Lederer, “UN Condemns S Korea ship sinking,” AP, July 10, 2010.
10. Neil MacFaquahar, “Condemnation of Ship’s Sinking is a ‘Victory’ North Korea
Says,” New York Times, July 9, 2010, a version of online article appeared in print edition
Page 66
KOREA.html.
11. “Russian Navy Team’s Analysis of the Cheonan Incident,” Posted on July 27,
Hankyoreh, modified on July 29.
http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/432230.html. The Russian
Experts document is titled “Data from the Russian Naval Expert Group’s Investigation
into the Cause of the South Korean Naval Vessel Cheonan’s Sinking.”
See also “Russia’s Cheonan Investigation Suspects that Sinking Cheonan Ship was
Caused by a Mine,” posted on July 27, 2010, Hankyoreh, modified on July 28, 2010.
http://www.hani.co.kr/ arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/432232.html.
12. UN Security Council, S/PRST/2010/13. Presidential Statement of July 9, 2010.
Available.)
13. Barbara Demick and John M. Glionna, “Doubts Surface on North Korean Role in
/jul/23/world/la-fg-korea-torpedo-20100724/2. (No Longer Available.)
14. Donald P. Gregg, “Testing North Korean Waters,” New York Times, August 31, 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opinion/01iht-edgregg.html
15. Security Council, S/2010/294, June 8, 2010.
http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-
CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/Nkorea%20S%202010 %20294.pdf. Letter, DPKR June 8 2010.
16. See for example: Ronda Hauben, “Netizens Question Cause of Cheonan Tragedy,”
OhmyNews International, June 8, 2010. (See page 21 in this issue.)
Ronda Hauben, “Questioning Cheonan Investigation Stirs Controversy,” OhmyNews
International, June 29, 2010. (See page 24 in this issue.)
17. Security Council, S/2010/294, June 8, 2010.
http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-
CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/NKorea%20S%2020 10%20294.pdf.
See also “[FULL] Colin Powell’s Presentation to the UN Security Council On Iraq’s
WMD Program,” Feb 5, 2003.
https://youtu.be/DhWlPo3qxak.
18. Tae-ho Kwon, “South Korean Government Impeded Russian Team’s Cheonan
Investigation: Donald Gregg,” Hankyoreh, September 4, 2010.
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/ e_northkorea/438299.html.
19. See for example “PSPD’s Stance on the Presidential Statement of the UNSC
Regarding the Sinking of the ROK Naval Vessel Cheonan.”
http://www.peoplepower21.org/English/40247.
[Editor’s note: The following article first appeared on the netizenblog on June 26, 2013.
It can be sen online at:
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2013 /06/26/us-misrepresents-
its-role-in-korean-war-and-in-armistice-agreement-as-un-command/.]
Page 67
U.S. Misrepresents its Role in Korean
War and in Armistice Agreement as UN
Command
by Ronda Hauben
July 27 of this year will be an important anniversary. It will be the
60
th
anniversary of the Armistice Agreement which provided the means to
end the hostilities of the Korean War.
The armistice was recognized as a temporary means to stop the
military action. It included a recommendation that it be followed by a
political conference three months later to hammer out a political
agreement which would serve as a peace treaty ending the Korean war.
The political conference has never been held. And no means has yet been
created to settle the unresolved issues of the Korean War.
At the UN on Friday, June 21, the permanent mission of the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), more commonly known
as North Korea, held a press conference.
1
Sin Son Ho, DPRK’s
Ambassador to the United Nations, presented journalists with a statement
outlining the background of a serious problem remaining from the Korean
War, a problem that needs to be resolved if the tension on the Korean
Peninsula is not to escalate.
He documented how the United States, without any authority from
the United Nations, changed the name of the Unified Command it was to
direct, to the name ‘UN Command’. This change falsifies the nature of the
U.S. role in the Korean War and in the Armistice, making it appear that
the U.S. is acting under the authority of the United Nations. The decisions
made by what is called the ‘UN Command’ are made by the U.S. The U.S.
is not acting as a subsidiary or representative of the UN when it acts under
the name of the “UN Command.” Yet the false appearance given is that
the U.S. is acting under the authority of the UN.
The DPRK Ambassador explained how this misrepresentation was
accomplished by the U.S. in July 1950. On July 7, a Security Council
Resolution (S.C. 84, 1950) was passed putting the U.S. as the head of what
was called in the resolution the Unified Command, but with no oversight
Page 68
obligations by the UN for the actions of the U.S. On July 25, 1950, the
U.S. submitted a report to the Security Council in which it replaced the
name Unified Command with the name ‘UN Command.’
Subsequently, the U.S. uses the designation UN Command despite
the fact that this creates a false impression that there is a role played by the
UN in Korean Armistice activities. The U.S. even uses UN Command as
its designation in the actual Armistice Agreement.
The DPRK has at various times tried to get the U.S. to drop its
misleading use of the title UN Command. In November 1975, Resolution
3390 (XXX) B was passed by the UN General Assembly calling for
negotiations between the relevant parties so that the U.S. would no longer
use the misleading designation ‘UN Command’ to represent the U.S.
military role. The U.S. has not fulfilled on the obligation to carry out these
negotiations. Instead the U.S. at the time argued that changing its
designation as the UN Command would affect the oversight provisions
provided for in the Armistice Agreement.
Subsequently, the DPRK points out that in the 60 years since the
Armistice Agreement was signed, any oversight provisions it may have
included no longer exist and the actual decisions regarding the agreement
currently are made through negotiations between the Korean People’s
Army (KPA) and the U.S. military authority.
In view of the facts, Ambassador Sin said, the existence of the UN
Command is an “anachronism.” Instead of agreeing to dissolve it,
however, he explained, the U.S. is projecting that it can serve as a
“multinational force command” which would constitute the “matrix of an
Asian version of NATO.”
Two former UN Secretary-Generals have spoken out against the
continuing use by the U.S. military of the name ‘UN Command.’
Ambassador Sin noted that both Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan
have gone on record confirming that there is no UN military activity
related to the U.S. claim that it is the UN Command.
At the June 21 noon press briefing by the Deputy Spokesman for UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a question was raised asking for Ban Ki-
moon’s views on the issue. The journalist asked:
2
As I am sure you know, just now, Sin Son Ho, the Permanent
Representative of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,
Page 69
held a press conference in which he said he called for the
dismantling of the “UN Command” uh, in South Korea, and he
said it is not really a UN body at all, and quoted Boutros
Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan to that effect. So what I wonder
is as, as, the office of the Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, as
the head of the UN system, has, does he, what is his position
on the legal status in terms of the UN of the ‘UN Command’?
And separately, does he have any, what … would be, what’s
his response to a call to, to dismantle this entity?
In apparent agreement with the DPRK, Deputy Spokesperson for the
Secretary-General, Eduardo del Buey responded:
But the United Nations has never had any role in the command
of any armed forces deployed in the Korean peninsula. In
particular, the United Nations did not at any time have any role
in the command of the forces that operated in Korea under the
Unified Command between 1950 and 1953.
In response, to the part of the question relating to Ban Ki-moon’s
view on the U.S. representing itself as the UN Command, the Deputy
Spokesperson promised a future reply. He noted that:
Well, first of all, as you know, the Secretary-General is just
getting off the plane from China now, so he is going to be
reading the transcript of the statement by the Permanent
Representative of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,
and we’ll have something later on to say.
To an e-mail asking for further clarification of the Secretary-General’s
view about the DPRK’s call for the dissolution of the ‘UN Command,’ the
Deputy Spokesperson answered by referring to the Secretary-General’s
view that with respect to an issue related to the Armistice Agreement:
3
This is a matter for the parties to the Agreement. The United
Nations is not party to the Armistice Agreement.
Does this mean Ban Ki-moon believes that the misuse of the UN
name by the U.S. is an issue to be solved by the parties to the Armistice
Agreement, and is not a concern for the UN?
In his press briefing Ambassador Sin said that if the U.S. did not
dissolve the UN Command, the DPRK is considering once again pursuing
this issue at the UN General Assembly, which in November 1975 had
Page 70
already urged the U.S. to dissolve the UN Command (See 3390(XXX)B
1975).
Ambassador Sin explained that “due to the existence of the ‘UN
Command,’ the security mechanism on the Korean peninsula has become
war-oriented not peace-oriented.”
“In other words,” he elaborated, “the existence of the ‘UN
Command’ is not serving the peace building efforts on the Korean
peninsula. On the contrary, it is the root of evil or tumor laying a stepping
stone for the U.S. armed forces of aggression toward the DPRK and the
realization of the America’s Pivot to Asia strategy.”
Ambassador Sin proposed that “If the United States has real
intention to put an end to hostile relation with the DPRK, it should make
the right decision to dissolve the ‘UN Command’ and replace the
Armistice Agreement with a peace regime as proposed by the DPRK this
year when we mark the 60
th
year since the Armistice Agreement was
signed.”
Notes:
1. Press conference June 21, 2013, Ambassador Sin Son Ho at the UN. http://webtv.un
.org/media/press-conferences/watch/ambassador-sin-son-ho-the-permanent-
representative-of-the-democratic-peoples-republic-of-korea-to-the-un-press-conference
/2498682301001. (No Longer Available.) For an earlier version of the statement, see:
KCNA, “DPRK Foreign Ministry Issues Memorandum” January 14, 2013.
2. Daily Press Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General June
21, 2013. http://www.un.org/News/brief ings/docs/2013/db130621.doc.htm. (No Longer
Available.)
3. E-mail from Eduardo del Buey on June 25, 2013.
[Editor’s Note: This article appeared on the netizenblog on Jan. 29, 2017.]
Channel for Individuals or NGO’s to
Send Communication to the UN Security
Council
by Ronda Hauben
Page 71
Since the early days of the UN Security Council, there has been a
procedure for private individuals and non-governmental organizations to
be able to send communications to the Security Council on matters of
which it is seized.
1
The procedure has been referred to by its library
classification symbol which is S/NC.
I first came across this procedure when an NGO in South Korea had
been accused of being unpatriotic to the South Korean government
because that NGO (and others as well) sent a critique to the Security
Council about something the South Korean government was presenting to
the Security Council.
2
It seemed particularly inappropriate for the South Korean
government to accuse an NGO of disloyalty because of a letter sent to
members of the Security Council as there is a long tradition from 1946 to
the present for private individuals or NGO’s to write to the Security
Council. Security Council documents show that there are lists of probably
thousands of such communications.
In doing some research at the UN into the background of this
procedure of the UN I came to realize that in the early days of the Security
Council, lists of such communications were issued by the Secretariat on
a frequent basis. The procedure is described in the Appendix of the
Provisional Rules of Procedure of the Security Council. It states:
Provisional Procedure for Dealing with Communications from
Private Individuals and Non-Governmental Bodies
A. A list of all communications from private individuals and
non-governmental bodies relating to matters of which the Se-
curity Council is seized shall be circulated to all
representatives on the Security Council.
B. A copy of any communication on the list shall be given by
the Secretariat to any representative on the Security Council at
his request.
The lists published by the UN Secretariat of the communications
received by the Security Council from individuals or non-governmental
entities included the name and organization of the sender, the date of the
communication, the city or town and country of the sender, and originally
Page 72
whether the communication was a telegram, letter, petition etc. The
communications were grouped by the Security Council agenda item that
the communication referred to.
If a Security Council member saw some communication on a list that
was of interest, the Security Council member could request a copy of the
communication from the Secretariat.
From 1946 and for several years afterwards, lists were issued on a
frequent basis. By the mid 1990’s the lists would be issued on a quarterly
basis by the UN Secretariat. Then for some reason not yet understood,
starting from the 2000 list, lists by the Secretariat would only be issued
once a year, around April.
Along with the less frequent issuing of the lists of communications
sent to the Security Council, there appears to be no publicly available
information indicating how or where an individual or non-governmental
entity can send a communication to the Security Council.
Recently when asking some Security Council members if they were
aware of this procedure, only one indicated he remembered seeing some
correspondence from individuals or NGO’s sent to the Security Council.
Others appeared to have no knowledge of this process. While this brief
survey was only based on a small sample, it demonstrated a breakdown in
one of the few publicly available channels of communication between
members of the public and members of the Security Council.
In 2010 some NGO’s and some academics who were scientists
attempted to send communication to the Security Council about a matter
being considered by the Security Council. They sent email to all the mem-
ber states then on the Security Council. None of these communications,
however, appeared on the annual S/NC list published by the UN
Secretariat for 2010.
More recently, during the press conference marking the beginning
of the Russian Federation’s Presidency of the Security Council for the
month of October 2016, Ambassador Vitaly Churkin responded to a
question raised by a journalist. He said that he would support, “the greater
involvement of women” in line with Security Council Resolution 1325 to
help address the high level of tension on the Korean Peninsula.
In response to his statement, Christine Ahn, the International
Coordinator for the NGO “Women Cross DMZ” wrote to the Security
Page 73
Council asking that several recommendations the group proposed be raised
at the Security Council Debate on Resolution 1325 planned for October
25, 2016.
When she tried to find where to send her letter to have it considered
as a communication to the Security Council, however, there was no clear
information publicly available about where an individual or NGO should
send their communication. A press inquiry demonstrated that such
information was not easy to locate.
Similarly, a press inquiry to some Security Council members yielded
little help with how to find such information. It was only a month later, at
the press conference held by the Spanish Ambassador on the occasion of
assuming the Presidency of the Security Council for the month of
December 2016, that there was an offer of help to find the answer to the
mystery.
Ambassador Román Oyarzun Marchesi, the Spanish Ambassador to
the UN, welcomed the question on how to send communication to the
Security Council saying that his delegation “really believed in the
participation of civil society.” He promised that if information was sent to
him documenting the problem, “I’ll do my best … . I’ll see what I can
do.”
3
An inquiry by his press secretary led to a response from the
Secretariat. The email from the Office of the President of the Security
Council in the UN Department of Political Affairs in the Secretariat stated
that if an email or surface mail on a topic being considered by the Security
Council is sent to the email address given in the UN Journal for
communications for UN member nations to send their communication to
the Security Council, or to the postal address provided, it will usually be
informally circulated by the Security Council President via their “political
coordinators’ network.”
If the document “falls under one of the agenda items seized by the
Security Council, it gets listed and published as a Security Council
document under S/NC [year]/1.” Then it will appear on the list that is pub-
lished for that year by the Secretariat.
4
Looking at the earliest S/NC lists, one is impressed by the fact that
there are communications from individuals and groups around the world.
For example some of the earliest lists present communication received
Page 74
“Concerning Franco Regime in Spain.”
Looking at the names of those who are listed as sending
communication to the UN Security Council from 1946 to the present, one
gets a sense of the UN existing in bigger world in a way that is different
from what is conveyed when one just watches the workings of, for
example, the Security Council. It would appear that more serious attention
should be paid to making the address for sending communication to the
Security Council publicly available.
Also more frequent publication of the lists would make it possible
for Security Council members to make timely requests for copies of the
communications that interested them. That could help broaden the per-
spectives of Security Council members to enable them to be better able to
find peaceful ways to resolve difficult conflicts.
Notes:
1. The term “seized” as used at the UN indicates, “that, while the Security Council is
seized of a matter, no other organ of the United Nations may legally take it up, as under
Article 12 of the UN Charter.” See:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/be_seized_of.
2. Ronda Hauben, “S. Korean Gov’t Urged to End Criminal Investigation of NGO for
Questions on Cheonan Sent to UN,” taz.de/netizenblog, June 26, 2010.
3. Román Oyarzun Marchesi (Spain), President of the Security Council for the month of
December 2016 – Press Conference. See “1 Dec 2016 – Press Conference by H.E. Mr.
Román Oyarzun Marchesi, Permanent Representative of Spain to the United Nations and
President of the Security Council for the month of December 2016, on the Security Coun-
cil Programme of work for the month” at: https://media.un.org/en/asset/k1c/k1cgrjce9a.
(watch starting at 23:20.) (No Longer Available.)
4. Communication from private individuals, NGO’s or other entities which relate to the
work of the Security Council can be sent to the e-mail address listed in the UN Journal,
[email protected] or mailed to:
United Nations Security Council
405 East 42nd Street
New York, NY 10017
Page 75
EDITORIAL STAFF
Ronda Hauben
William Rohler
Norman O. Thompson
Michael Hauben (1973-2001)
Jay Hauben
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sarily the opinions of the Amateur Computerist newsletter. We welcome
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