North Korea is trying to use the US' proposals for UN reform as a means to end more than five decades of a US-led military presence protecting South Korea from attack.
In a letter circulated on Thursday that was addressed to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, North Korean Ambassador Pak Gil-yon called the US-led UN Command "illegal" and said it should be dismantled.
The UN Command in South Korea was created shortly after North Korea invaded on June 25, 1950, when the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for nations to militarily assist South Korea.
About 15 countries sent troops to fight alongside South Korean and US forces to repel North Korean and later communist Chinese forces.
The 1953 armistice ending the war left the Korean peninsula divided with troops from the multinational UN Command and North Korea patrolling opposite sides of the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone that separates communist North Korea from South Korea.
Today, the only foreign combat troops in South Korea are from the US, but other countries occasionally send liaison officers or their embassy military attaches to UN Command meetings.
Pak said he was writing to Annan to reiterate North Korea's position on the UN Command "in the light of UN reform."
The UN is in the throes of an overhaul of its post-World War II structures and management practices, and the US has made a series of reform proposals, as have other countries in the 191-nation world body.
"The United States, referring to UN reform, argued that peacekeeping operations that have not played a due role in ending conflicts and securing peace and stability, or have lasted longer than necessary, should be terminated," Pak said.
"In this regard, we hold that dismantling the `illegal UN Command' that has existed in South Korea for more than half a century is indeed the number one target of UN reform," he said.
"We cannot think of true UN reform if hangovers from the past century that do not have an actual relationship with the UN are left intact because the superpower has a hand in them," Pak said.
Benjamin Chang, a spokesman for the US Mission to the UN, said on Thursday that he had not seen the letter, but that generally speaking "real UN reform" begins at UN headquarters in New York. Officials at the State Department in Washington also said they had not seen it and could not comment.
While a cease-fire has been in place since 1953, the Korean War is technically not over.
Pak said the continued existence of the UN Command, which he claims was "fabricated unlawfully" by the US, "creates obstacles to the settlement of the Korean issue and damages the credibility of the UN."
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS