The Amateur

Computerist

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/

Spring 2026 Reporting about Korea, North and South Volume 41 No. 1

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page 1

Participatory Nature of OhmyNews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 3

Ban Ki-moon Inaugurated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 7

Lunch with Ban Ki-Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 10

Ban Ki-Moon’s Role of UN Secretary General 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 13

Ban Ki-Moon’s Role of UN Secretary General 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 19

U.S., North Korea Move to Open Ties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 25

North Korea’s $25 Million and Banco Delta Asia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 28

Behind the Blacklisting of Banco Delta Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 32

Netizens Are Critical to Citizen Journalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 37

The Future of the Korean Peninsula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 39

Citizen Journalism, Past and Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 44

The Problem Facing the UN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 56

Introduction

In the 1990s, Ronda Hauben and Michael Hauben put together their

book, Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet. The

book was published in 1997. In 2003, Ronda Hauben (hereafter Hauben)

saw a headline, “Netizens Elect a President.” That was Roh Moo Hyun, a

political outsider who was elected in Dec 2002 as the President of South

Korea with the overwhelming support of the netizens.

Hauben’s interest in netizens drove her to learn more about what was

happening in South Korea and the netizens there. She learned that an

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online newspaper, OhmyNews (OMN), had championed the netizen

support for Roh Moo Hyun. By 2004, Hauben began to send articles to

OMN which were translated into Korean. When OMN started OhmyNews

International (OMNI) in English, Hauben became a columnist. Her articles

were then published in their original English.

When in 2006, the South Korean politician and diplomat Ban Ki

Moon was chosen to be the next UN Secretary General, Hauben asked

OMN if she could be its regular reporter at the UN, OMN agreed and as-

signed her as the UN reporter for its international edition.

Hauben covered Ban Ki Moon’s first day (1/2/2007) and reported on

it in OMNI, “At Lunch with Ban Ki Moon.” The next day, the UN

Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea met to find ways

to enforce the sanctions voted by the Security Council after North Korea

conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006. From then on, Hauben

followed how the UN handled the two Koreas or other Korea related

issues which she documented in her articles in OMNI. Her articles showed

an unusual fairness toward North Korea and respect for the netizens and

their movement for more democracy in South Korea.

In 2010, OMN ended its International (English) edition. That ended

Hauben’s coverage of the UN for OMN. But she continued her coverage

with the netizens blog on the Tages Zeitung website. In a conversation,

another reporter, Ann Charles, who covered the UN for Lithuanian media

and was a good friend of Hauben, made an observation. She observed that

Hauben was a rare, almost unique reporter because she covered both North

Korea and South Korea fairly. This reporter urged Hauben to put her

articles about North and South Korea together and have the collection pub-

lished. We have tried to begin such a collection in this issue

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[Editors Note: The following is a talk about OhmyNews given by Ronda Hauben at the

Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA) in San

Francisco on May 26, 2007.]

The Participatory Nature of OhmyNews

by Ronda Hauben

Today I want to describe the creation and significance of OhmyNews

as a model for a new form of journalism, for a journalism that is appropri-

ate for the 21

Century, a journalism that has been made possible by the

Internet and the netizens.

I plan to present three different examples of OhmyNews related

experiences and then draw together their implications, toward understand-

ing the participatory experience provided by OhmyNews.

As a featured writer for OhmyNews International I recently covered

the 50

anniversary dinner in New York City of the Korea Society. One

of the speakers at the dinner was Assistant Secretary of State Christopher

Hill. He explained the problem of $25 million in funds of North Korean

money being frozen as part of a U.S. Treasury Department proceeding

against a bank in Macau, China, the Banco Delta Asia (BDA). This is a

problem 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 didn’t seem to represent a newsworthy event.

In the next few days, however, it appeared that an important story

was developing.

In the process of trying to unravel the unfolding developments I

found one news organization that did a story about the legitimate activity

the bank had engaged in for North Korea. The news organization was the

McClatchy Newspapers. I also found links to some documents refuting the

Treasury Department’s charges.

I now had the documents in the case. The U.S. government’s

findings gave no specific evidence of wrong doing on the part of the bank.

The bank’s statements and refutation gave significant documentation

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refuting charges of illegal activity on the part of the bank. The refutation

also made the case that there were political motives for the allegations

rather than actual illegal activity on the part of the bank. The U.S. gov-

ernment had targeted a small Macau 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 the story. I wrote an article, submitting

it around 5 a.m. my time to OhmyNews International (OMNI), using the

software OMNI provides for submitting articles. By noon the next day, my

story appeared on OMNI.

That was May 18.

Also on May 18, the Wall Street Journal carried an Op Ed by the

former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton. The article scolded the

U.S. government for agreeing to return the $25 million to North Korea.

I wanted to share this experience here today in order to put the focus

of the rest of my remarks about the Korean OMN, the English OMNI and

the theme of citizen participation into an appropriate context.

OMN grew out of the experience of its founder, Mr. Oh Yeonho, and

the vision he had for transforming the South Korean news landscape. For

over 10 years, from 1988 until 1999, Oh was a journalist for an alternative

South Korean magazine, the Monthly Mal. One experience Oh uses to help

explain the impetus for OhmyNews is when he did a significant story

which uncovered the facts about a massacre of South Korean civilians by

U.S. soldiers that had taken place during the Korean War. Oh published

his expose in 1994. The story had little impact. In 1999, however, some

Associated Press (AP) reporters did a similar story. The AP story was

picked up by much of the South Korean mainstream news media and

treated like a breaking news event. The AP reporters won a Pulitzer Prize

for the story.

Mr. Oh realized it is not enough to break a news story. What is

judged as news in South Korea (and similarly in the U.S. I may add) is

more dependent on the nature of the news organization reporting the news

than on the newsworthiness of the story itself. Mr. Oh set out to change

this situation by starting OhmyNews.

His goal was to transform the news environment in South Korea

which at the time was 80 percent conservative and 20 percent progressive

into an environment that was 50 percent conservative and 50 percent

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progressive. His objective was for the quality of the news to determine its

coverage, rather than the finances of the organization publishing the story.

Mr. Oh describes how he recognized that the desire of netizens in

South Korea for political change in Korea was reflected in the campaign

for the presidency of a candidate who was not part of the political

mainstream. Oh was determined to give this story the political coverage

it merited. OhmyNews was the means to achieve this goal. The conserva-

tive mainstream press was hostile to Roh Moohyun. Never in the past had

someone won the presidency without the support of the conservative

mainstream press. Nevertheless Roh Moohyun won a surprising victory

in December 2002 due to the active election campaigning for him by

netizens and OhmyNews. Mr. Oh describes how when the election was

over, reporters from the conservative mainstream press called him and

other OhmyNews reporters and congratulated them for having made the

victory possible.

In his book The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine explains the problem

of creating a government that will be democratic. The essence of

democracy, Paine explains, is that the sovereignty of a nation lies in its

people, not in the government officials. Democracy requires the participa-

tion of the people and also observation and control over a government by

its citizens. The process of creating a constitution is to create the compact

of the people that will be the basis for determining and overseeing the

actions of government officials. Paine describes this lesson as the gift of

the American revolution of 1776 and the French revolution of 1789.

We are looking at the same problem over 200 years later. It has

become clear that the existence of a constitution is not adequate as a

means for citizens to exercise their control over government officials. A

peoples’ or citizens’ press is also needed as a means of exercising some

of the desired control of citizens over their government.

A problem that has developed is that mainstream media organiza-

tions as Mr. Oh found in South Korea, often don’t fulfill this important

function of the press. Fortunately, there are many citizens today who feel

the need for control over the abuse of power by government officials.

These citizens are eager to participate in carrying out the role of the press

as a watchdog over government officials.

In 2000 Mr. Oh was able to start the Korean language OhmyNews

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with a small staff of four reporters. By welcoming citizen reporters to

write for OhmyNews, he was able to augment the content of the newspa-

per so it could be much broader than the limited finances and meager

resources would have otherwise made possible. The staff has since grown

as have the number of citizen reporters participating in OhmyNews.

There’s a lot more I would like to be able to say about OhmyNews

if I had more time. While OhmyNews (OMN) is published in Korean, an

English edition called OhmyNews International (OMNI) is available so

those who cannot read and write in Korean but who want to know more

about OhmyNews can participate and in this manner, learn more about the

concepts and practice of citizen journalism as developed by OhmyNews.

Citizen journalism as pioneered by OMN is the continuation of what

Michael Hauben described as one of the gifts of the Internet. He wrote that

the Internet “gives the power of the reporter to the netizen.”

Mr. Oh’s vision and practice in creating and developing the Korean

OMN is an attempt to give the power of the news media to the citizen,

making it possible for news stories citizens uncover to get the needed

support and distribution so as to be able to impact the policy agenda and

decision making processes of the government.

In this context, OMNI gives citizens and journalists from countries

around the world a taste of what it could mean if they had an OMN in their

countries. Its intent is to be a catalyst for the creation and spread of other

OhmyNewslike sites in other countries besides South Korea and then to

support the collaboration among these diverse OMN-like sites. (There is

already a version of OhmyNews in Japan.)

There is not yet an OMN in the U.S. So my story about the connec-

tion of the U.S. government’s policy toward China and the U.S. govern-

ment actions against the Macau bank is not yet likely to be able to impact

how the mainstream news in the U.S. frames the story with North Korea

and the sixparty 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 experi-

ence of exploring the potential of what it will make possible.

To sum up, Mr. Oh, describing citizen journalism at the OMNI forum

in South Korea last July said:

Though we are an open platform accessible to everyone, not

everyone can write a news story. Only those reporters who are

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passionately committed to social change and reporting make

our project possible. The main reason that citizen journalism

has not grown and spread more rapidly is the difficult task of

finding and organizing these passionate citizen reporters in

waiting.

Notes:

1. The url for the Korean language OhmyNews is:

http://www.ohmynews.com

2. Ronda Hauben, “Behind the Blacklisting of Banco Delta Asia Is the policy aimed at

targeting China as well as North Korea?”, OhmyNews International, May 18, 2007.

3. Michael and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet, IEEE Computer Society, 1997, distributed by John Wiley and Sons,

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/

4. Oh Yeonho, “Welcome to Korean and OhmyNews,” reprinted in the Amateur

Computerist, Vol. 15, No 1,

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn151.pdf, pp. 2-3.

[Editor’s Note: The following article first appeared in OhmyNews International on

December 15, 2006.]

Ban Ki-moon Inaugurated

by Ronda Hauben

In the ceremony inaugurating him as the new Secretary General of

the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon from the Republic of Korea promised

to uphold the interests of the United Nations above any national interests

and “not to seek or accept instructions in regard to the performance of my

duties from any government or other authority external to the Organiza-

tion.” The Secretary General designate will take office on Jan. 1, 2007.

The inauguration ceremony to administer the oath of office to Ban

was held at a session of the UN General Assembly on Thursday, Dec 14.

Spokespeople of the regional representatives presented short speeches to

thank the outgoing Secretary General, Kofi Annan, for his service to the

United Nations and to consider some of the highlights of the events of the

past 10 years during the course of Annan’s tenure as Secretary General of

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the UN

In his remarks thanking Annan, Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo of

the Republic of South Africa, speaking for the regional group of 77 and

China, expressed his sentiments that Annan will be missed. Among the

achievements of the outgoing Secretary General, Kumalo noted,” You

always spoke softly but your voice was loudest when you fearlessly told

the truth to the powerful, reminding them never to forget those who are

called, ‘the least among us.’ Even when circumstances forced you to stay

quiet, your silence was even louder.”

While only a few brief references to specific events during Annan’s

tenure in office were mentioned during the speeches, the ceremony led me

to recall two important developments which were not included.

One was the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) held in

Geneva in December 2003 and in Tunis in November 2005.

The WSIS event was unusual for the United Nations as it reflected

the pressure of the people of the world to benefit from the technical and

communication advance that the Internet makes possible. Heads of state

from a number of nations were present. and the summit was asked for a

commitment that people around the world not merely be treated as victims

or as customers, but rather be empowered to speak for themselves and

have their voices enter the global conversation.

The second event which stands out was the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. and Great Britain had come to the UN asking for a resolution

supporting their planned invasion. The UN did not support their attack on

the sovereign nation of Iraq, but neither did it condemn the invasion. The

power of the U.S. government in the Security Council was a force that

limited the UN’s ability to condemn the aggression against Iraq.

While none of the speeches about Kofi Annan’s term in office spoke

to these events, the General Assembly ceremony presents the occasion to

think back over the past 10 years of developments at the UN and to project

ahead to what the future may bring.

In his speech in honor of Annan, Kumalo reminded his audience that

the issue of Palestine was not solved. “I also dare say that on 31 Dec. 2006

when you leave office,” Kumalo said to Annan, “the light of hope for the

people of Palestine who live under occupation will shine even less bright.”

Ban Ki-moon’s short speech after his inauguration was directed to

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what seemed administrative matters with regard to the UN operation and

toward the general problem he referred to as dissension or lack of trust

within the UN.

When asked about this focus later at his short 30-minute press

conference, Ban said there were two aspects to his goal to restore trust in

the UN system. One had to do with UN efficiency, the second had to do

with distrust among member states and between member states and the

UN. Since he did not elaborate further, one can only speculate about what

he was referring to.

Other questions asked at the press conference were helpful in adding

specifics to the pressing world issues that Ban will have to broach when

he takes office officially in January 2007.

These include the issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and the

complaint of North Korea that there are economic and security issues by

other countries that led them to act as they did with regard to developing

nuclear weapons. Ban expressed his support for the return of the parties to

the six-party talks, to begin Dec. 18. He noted that he will place a high

priority on following the developments. Also he added that he would think

about what he needs to do to facilitate the negotiation process.

Other questions referred to the problems in the Middle East, the

Security Council discussion about Iran’s nuclear program, Israel’s recent

admission that it possesses nuclear weapons, the problem in Darfur, and

other pressing issues. In a number of his responses, Ban said he would

endeavor to consult those involved in the conflict and others in the

troubled region in his efforts to help make progress on solving problems.

Another question raised was how he felt about the desire of a number

of member states to see the permanent membership of the Security

Council expanded to include two African and two more Asian members.

Ban’s response was that this was by far the most important issue at

the UN and that it is necessary to have expansion and reform of the

Security Council. He promised that he would try to facilitate consultations

to help this to occur.

The press conference was dominated by questions from reporters for

large mainstream media oganizations. Ban has by now had two press

conferences at the UN but the range of questions he has been asked has

been limited by the short period of time provided for the press conference

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after Ban makes a statement.

Originally, Ban promised to be available to hear from the many

people involved in disputes and problems and to take into account their

viewpoints. While it is still early in his assumption of the office of the

Secretary General, this pledge suggests that he will also provide time to

hear from the press, and from a broader set of the media than primarily

from mainstream commercial outlets. How often the Secretary General-

designate will be available to hear from reporters and to respond to their

concerns and questions will provide a measure of how seriously he takes

his promises in practice.

The inauguration of Ban Ki-moon as the 8

Secretary General of the

United Nations provides a challenge to the people of the world to put the

needed pressure on the UN so that his tenure in office will merit similar

or even greater words of praise than that of the Secretary General in whose

footsteps he follows.

[Editor’s Note: The following article first appeared on OhmyNews International on

January 2, 2007. The author was a reporter for OMNI from Oct 2006 until OMNI ended

its English edition in 2010.]

At Lunch with Ban Ki-Moon

by Ronda Hauben

Today, Tuesday, Jan. 2, (2007), was the first working day at the

United Nations for the new Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, since Jan. 1,

was an official UN holiday.

At lunch time I was in the UN cafeteria and noticed that Ban and his

information officer Choi Soung-ah were coming into the seating area of

the cafeteria with their trays.

As they were near where I was sitting, I invited Ban and Choi to join

me. Ban sort of smiled and looked around for where to sit. He and Choi sat

at the next table. Several UN staff people sat at the other end of the table

he had chosen. As there was an empty seat near him I joined them.

A few people nearby greeted Ban saying “Annyong Haseyo.” One

Page 10

person remarked that there should be kimchi in the cafeteria. Ban agreed.

I introduced myself to Ban telling him that I write for OhmyNews

International, which is a South Korean newspaper, and I gave him my

card. He said that he knew OhmyNews. He remembered that he had been

interviewed by OhmyNews a few years before. As part of the brief

conversation I wondered if he was excited about the new position. I got

the impression that he realized that it was a difficult challenge.

I gave him a card I have for the book I am co-author of, Netizens: On

the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet. I mentioned that I have

been impressed by how many South Korean netizens have been active

trying to use the Internet to understand problems and to solve them.

I mentioned that there are many people who want a better world and

that if there were a way to tap the potential of this resource, it would help

to deal better with the kinds of problems the UN faces in the world. I

explained how the Internet and netizens are a beginning of a way to do

this.

I left, but later when I was in one of the press areas at the UN. I saw

a video of Ban going around to different offices in the New York

headquarters building, and speaking with the people who work in these

different offices. They in turn would explain what happened in their areas.

He went into an area where there were some shops with various tools to

do repairs. In another area that he visited, there was a printing facility.

They were printing a 2007 calendar with the photos of all the UN

Secretary Generals including the photo of Ban Ki-moon.

It was good to see that Ban was acquainting himself with the people

and activities at the UN.

Earlier in the day, he had arrived at the UN at 9:30 a.m. Shortly

afterwards he held a brief press conference. He made a short statement,

and then took a few questions. Several of the questions reporters asked

focused on Ban’s view of the recent execution of Saddam Hussein. The

new Secretary General said that each nation decides if they will have

capital punishment. Several reporters pointed out that the position of the

UN had been opposed to capital punishment.

At noon there was a press briefing with Michele Montas, who is

Ban’s newly appointed spokeswoman. She had been a well known Haitian

journalist, who with her husband Jean Dominique, ran the pioneering

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Creole radio station Radio Haiti. Jean was assassinated in April 2000 and

Montas fled to New York in February 2003 after she received several

death threats. She has worked at the UN for several years since then.

At the press briefing with Montas, several reporters again brought up

Ban’s earlier statements regarding the execution of Saddam Hussein. One

person pointed to a statement from the UN that Saddam’s trial was not

credible. Other reporters referred to a statement from the UN’s representa-

tive in Iraq raising questions about the appropriateness of executing

Saddam. Another journalist pointed out that given the situation in Iraq,

some people were saying that executing Saddam was a war crime. Montas

promised to look into these issues and in a few days clarify the Secretary

General’s position.

Other questions raised included the position of the new Secretary

General on the continued military activity by Ethiopia in Somalia, whether

the Secretary General would encourage discussion by the Security Council

members with those it was bringing sanctions against before the sanctions

were imposed, what the Secretary General’s plans were with regard to

North Korea, and how he would proceed with regard to the situation in

Darfur. Several questions concerned the new staff appointments the

Secretary General was planning. (A video of the press briefing is online

here [no longer available].)

Ban Ki-moon’s first working day at the UN was an example of the

challenge he faces. There are many places in the world where there is a

need to have an intervention by the moral authority vested in the UN

Secretary General in order to help challenge the forces of injustice. Also,

there will be pressure on the new Secretary General by those in power to

allow them to exercise their power without any restraint. Will the new

Secretary General be able to speak out in favor of justice? How can those

who want to see a better world provide a counterweight to the pressure

that will be exerted by those who want to exercise unbridled power?

There are institutions and procedures that have developed in the

course of the UN’s operations that make it possible for the powerful to act

without any consideration for the views and needs of those with less or no

power. Such institutions or practices can discredit the UN as an institution

if they are allowed to dominate the activity of the organization. There is

clearly a struggle within the UN over whether the power of governments

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like that of the U.S. will be allowed to dominate the organization. The new

Secretary General has said that he wants the U.S. to be active in UN

activity. Can there be constructive activity on he part of the U.S. that takes

into account the needs of the people of the U.S. and of people around the

world, rather than activity geared to the interests of the multinational

corporations and other powerful sectors of U.S. society?

Ban Ki-moon faces a significant challenge in the problems referred

to during his first working day at the UN. The role to be played by the

press is very important in the challenge he is facing. Will the press be a

public relations echo chamber for what is being done at the UN? Will the

reporters from news organizations representing powerful interests be given

access to exert pressure in the interest of those they represent? Or will the

new Secretary General find a way to activate the people and the press from

all corners of the globe to be part of the discussion and consideration of

the problems that are pressing at the UN? Can there be broad ranging

public dialog to help to clarify where the public interest lies and how it can

prevail?

This is the difficult challenge facing the new Secretary General of

the UN. This is a problem that a broad ranging use of the Internet and a

welcoming of participation by netizens can help to solve.

[Editor’s Note: The following article first appeared in OhmyNews International on June

30, 2007 which marked the first six months that Ban Ki-moon held the position as Secre-

tary General of the United Nations. The following is the first of a two-part article that was

an effort to look at the role of this Secretary General and some of the challenges he faces.]

Ban Ki-Moon’s Role of UN Secretary

General [Part 1]

by Ronda Hauben

Introduction

Ban Ki-moon’s nomination by the Security Council to be the 8

Secretary General of the United Nations was sent to the General Assembly

on Oct. 13, 2006. Ban succeeded in winning the nomination after a

Page 13

difficult and contested campaign.

But his trial by fire was only just

beginning. Ban had succeeded in winning the votes of China and of the

U.S. His achievement winning the votes of these two nations, who are

permanent members of the Security Council, was seen by a number of

commentators as the critical step needed to win the nomination for

Secretary General.

Would this very achievement, especially the achievement of winning

the vote of the U.S. government in the Security Council, become a

handicap that would negatively affect Ban’s ability to succeed in the

position as the 8

Secretary General of the United Nations?

Goals Expressed in Hankyoreh Interview

An interview with Ban Ki-moon on Oct. 30, 2006, shortly after Ban

won appointment by the General Assembly as the new Secretary General,

and in the interval before he would assume the office in January 2007,

offers a rare glimpse of how the soon-to-be-appointed Secretary General

viewed his hopes and goals for his new position.

The interview was conducted in the offices of the Korean newspaper

Hankyoreh, by Moon Chung-in, a Professor at Yonsei University and an

Envoy for International Stability.

The interview was done in Korean, and

translated and published in the English edition of Hankyoreh. The goals

Ban outlined in this interview provide a yardstick to measure how

successfully he is in fulfilling the obligations of his new position.

In the interview, Ban describes a recent visit to the White House

shortly after he won the appointment as Secretary General. President Bush

greeted him as “Mr Landslide” congratulating him on his victory. The plan

had been for Ban to see Steve Hadley, the U.S. National Security Advisor

and if time permitted, to briefly meet Bush. Instead he spoke with Bush for

more than 20 minutes.

Ban recounts how he and Bush spoke about UN reform and the

North Korean nuclear program. “Bush,” Ban says, “requested that I drive

forth with UN reforms, assuring me that the U.S. would actively lend its

support.” In the interview, Bush promised to work with the South Korean

President Roh Moo-hyun to peacefully resolve the North Korean nuclear

problem.

Page 14

Ban also visited China. He describes his meeting with the Chinese

President Hu Jintao on this visit. Hu told Ban that “the role of a newly

appointed Secretary General is very important and that China would be of

active assistance.” Ban revealed that during his campaign for the nom-

ination, China “could not make public its support,” but that it had

“actively helped out behind the scenes.” Though it is not yet apparent how

China’s support for Ban’s nomination affects Ban’s actions as Secretary

General, U.S. support for Ban’s nomination appears to have a significant

effect on his activity as Secretary General.

During the Hankyoreh interview Ban expressed a belief he has

reiterated many times since, that the U.S. is “the UN’s most important

member.” Ban proposed that the UN needed the “proactive participation”

of the U.S. in order to function properly, just as he believed the U.S.

needed the UN for its interests.

Also during the interview, Ban expressed his commitment as

Secretary General to work to help resolve the problems with North Korea.

“I will appoint a politician or diplomat,” he asserted, “with the confidence

of the international community, someone who has the trust of both North

and South Korea to actively push the issue forward. This envoy,” he

explained, “must be one to impel the six-party talks to action when they

stagnate, and must be prepared to play a direct role when necessary. I am

ever ready to intervene directly when intervention is called for.” Ban also

proposed that the UN had to find a means to help with transforming the

cease-fire that was signed by the U.S. and North Korea at the end of the

Korean War into a more permanent peace agreement.

Ban promised to present a blueprint for what he hoped to accomplish

in his first 100 days, in his first year, and in his five year term. His

priority, he explained, would be in the appointments he would make for

UN personnel and that these would “raise morale and cultivate profession-

alism.”

Ban’s goal at the end of his five year term or ten years if he were to

win reappointment for a second term, would be “to create a UN reborn as

an organization that enjoys much greater international confidence. I will

make the UN into a body fit for the challenges and theme of the 21st

century,” he promised. To obtain this objective, he proposed to support

“development”, especially, “development in Africa and the Millennium

Page 15

Development Plan.” His aim would be to “make certain that the UN has

a role at the center of multilateral diplomacy.”

In the interview, Ban also describes how Roh Moo-hyun and the

South Korean press helped his candidacy to succeed by “campaigning for

me at every opportunity while meeting with foreign heads of state.” The

South Korean media “also helped a great deal,” Ban notes. Ban was aware,

too, that it was a particular source of pride for Korea that the 8th Secretary

General would be from Korea.

Comments on Ban’s 100-day Anniversary

By Ban’s 100 day anniversary, April 10, media commentary on his

accomplishments documented the frustration he had experienced.

Comments from several diplomats were testimony to the mistakes made

as he and his advisors rushed to put their reform agenda into effect.

The Chinese Ambassador to the UN, Wong Guangya commented on

how Ban tried to impose changes in the structure of the UN Secretariat,

only to meet opposition from a number of countries, observes, “His

intentions are good. He is trying to make the Secretariat work more

effectively. But personally I feel he’s a new comer and he does not

understand the culture and the environment in this house. You have to

identify who are the stakeholders and how to test the temperature before

jumping in. He hasn’t done that and he has felt the heat.”

Similarly, South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo is quoted

as being frustrated by Ban’s “‘decide first, consult afterward’ behavior.”

Even the American Ambassador, Alejandro D. Wolff, who originally

replaced John Bolton, said that there were those “convinced that Ban was

‘essentially responding to American demands.’”

This impression, Wolff

explained, helped to generate distrust in the reforms Ban is trying to

implement.

Role of Secretary General

The role of Secretary General has a number of constraints. It also is

a role that carries certain obligations. During his inauguration, Ban took

an oath that he would uphold the interests of the United Nations above any

national interests and “not to seek or accept instructions in regard to the

Page 16

performance of my duties from any government or other authority external

to the Organization.”

In a “Report to the Preparatory Commission of the UN 23 Dec

1945”, a set of duties and responsibilities are elaborated as a means of

stating what is explicit and implicit in the Secretary General’s role as

provided for by the UN charter.

While the Report specifies administrative and executive functions for

the Secretary General, it also states that “He is the channel of all commu-

nication with the United Nations in any of its organs. He must endeavor,

within the scope of his functions, to integrate the activity of the whole

complex of United Nations organs and see that the machine runs smoothly

and effectively.”

Along with the obligation for internal smooth functioning of the UN,

the report proposes an external function. It says, “the Secretary General,

more than anyone else, will stand for the United Nations as a whole. In the

eyes of the world, no less than the eyes of his own staff, he must embody

the principles and ideals of the charter to which the organization seeks to

give effect.”

Elements for Creating a Vision

Shashi Tharoor, one of the other candidates for the nomination by

the Security Council for the position of Secretary General maintained that

emanating from the job description for the Secretary General that each

Secretary General wrote for himself, “must shine the vision of the

incumbent of the office,” a vision which transcends the more practical

aspects of the job.

Describing the nature of the job, Tharoor proposed that what was

needed was a person with the ability and talent to respond to a wide range

of issues “and to know where to go for expert judgment when he or she

feels unqualified or uninformed on specific issues. Somebody who

recognizes he does not have all the answers but trusts himself to ask the

right questions.”

Tharoor, who had worked at the UN for almost 28 years, said that for

him the UN was more than a job. “It has always been a cause ... . For me

the UN is far more than an institution... . It represents the vision and

foresight of the leaders of the world who wanted to make the second half

Page 17

of the twentieth century better than the first.”

He described how the UN

was formed in response to a world that had experienced two world wars,

a number of civil wars, several instances of mass population displace-

ments, genocide, the holocaust, and Hiroshima. “The UN was part of an

attempt to genuinely make a better world and I believe for all its limita-

tions and failures, it did succeed in doing so,” he noted.

When Ban outlined the beginning elements for the new role he was

to assume in the Hankyoreh interview, he planned for the UN to play a

constructive role in helping to facilitate the six-party talks between North

Korea, South Korea, China, the U.S., Japan, and Russia. He had expressed

his determination to appoint an envoy to help overcome obstacles that

might impede the six-party process. This provided an example of a goal

he was bringing to his new role at the UN. How he would be able to carry

out this goal would be a concrete sign of whether he could be guided by

a vision for his role as Secretary General.

[To be continued in the next article]

Notes:

1. See for example: Ayca Arlyoruk, “Korean Minister Likely Candidate to Replace Kofi

Annan, but Will the General Assembly Approve?”, UNA-USA.

Ban was chosen as Secretary General in a process that is basically secret with

voting by the members of the Security Council that is not public. The five Permanent

members hold the ability to veto a candidate at a certain stage in the process. Questions

have been raised about what criteria are used and what is traded with whom is left as an

open question.

Also there were allegations that the South Korean government used grants and

various financial rewards to gain support for its candidate from several of the nonperma-

nent nations that were on the Security Council at the time of the voting for the next

Secretary General. See for example:

Richard Beeston, Richard Lloyd Parry, and James Bone, “Millions of dollars and

a piano may put Korean in UN’s top job,” Times Online, September 29, 2006.

Tran Van Loi, “ROK Buying UN Post: Times Millions of dollars have been spent

in lobbying for Ban ki-moon, says British newspaper”, OhmyNews International. October

1, 2006.

2. See, for example, Restoring the Vitality of the United Nations. Luncheon Speech by

H.E. Ban Ki-moon at the Council on Foreign Relations. May 31, 2006 New York, video

at:

https://youtu.be/9J5gy91HE0I?t=285

Page 18

3. [Interview] Next UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. in conversation with Moon

Chung-in, translated by Daniel Rakove, The Hankyoreh. November 3, 2006.

4. Maggie Farley, “New Secretary General Is Still Finding His Footing at the UN”, LA

Times, April 9, 2007.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ronda Hauben, “Ban Ki-moon Inaugurated, Pledges to uphold the interests of the

United Nations above all else”, OhmyNews International, December 15, 2006.

8. “Report to the Preparatory Commission of the UN 23 Dec 1945”, in Secretary or

General: The UN Secretary-General in World Politics?, edited by Simon Chesterman,

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, p. 243-244.

9. Ibid. p. 245.

10. Shashi Tharoor, in Secretary or General: The UN Secretary-General in World

Politics?, edited by Simon Chesterman, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007,

p. 46.

11. Lydia Swart, “Shashi Tharoor Sees his 28 Years at the United Nations as an Asset”,

Center for UN Reform Education, interview done 12 July 2006.

12. Ibid,

13. Ibid.

[Editor’s Note: June 30, 2007 marked the first six months that Ban Ki-moon held the

position as Secretary-General of the United Nations. The following is part 2 of an article

looking at the role of Secretary General and some of the challenges he faces. Part 2

appeared on OhmyNews International on July 4, 2007. Part 1 of this article also appears

in this issue.]

Ban Ki-Moon’s Role of UN Secretary

General [Part 2]

by Ronda Hauben

How has the role of the press affected the actions of the new

Secretary General? There is an important example that has developed

which helps to demonstrate the impact that the press has had on Ban Ki-

moon.

In the interview with Hankyoreh before he took office,

Ban

described how he would act to support a solution to the problem of

relations between North Korea and the Northeast Asia region, and the

Page 19

disarmament of the Korean peninsula.

On January 19, 2007, just a few weeks after Ban became Secretary

General, there were news reports of a breakthrough in negotiations

between the Christopher Hill for the U.S. and Kim Kye-gwan for North

Korea.

The International Herald Tribune reported:

“The movement toward a possible breakthrough came during the

talks in Berlin between Hill and Kim, Chosun Ilbo reported, citing

unidentified officials in Seoul and Beijing.”

Timed, it appeared, to coincide with the breakthrough, however, was

the publication in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) of an article “United

Nations Dictator’s Program” by Melanie Kirkpatrick. A similar article was

published by Fox News. These articles alleged that North Korea was

manipulating funds from the United Nations Development Program

(UNDP) in North Korea. These press accounts reported that UNDP funds

were being used by Kim Jong-il, for whatever he wanted, including “his

weapons program.”

No proof was provided for this accusation. The

articles included other unsupported allegations.

While most of the press reports in the U.S. just repeated or exagger-

ated the original allegations, a few Korean publications provided a

different perspective. The Korean newspaper Voice of the People pointed

out that the allegations of UNDP mismanagement appeared just as the

North Korean and U.S. representatives had had productive negotiations in

Berlin.

The Voice of the People asked why the U.S. Mission to the UN

was raising these issues “at this time.”

“Despite the totally unfounded allegation by the hawks,” the editors

write, “it has a political effect for freezing (the) bilateral relationship

between Washington and Pyongyang.”

Ban Ki-moon’s response to the WSJ and Fox news articles was to

call immediately for an audit of all UN programs. The audit was to start

with an audit of all programs in North Korea. A few days later the call for

an audit of all UN programs was dropped. The audit was to be of North

Korea’s UNDP program.

Some Background

A difficult period for Ban’s predecessor, Secretary General Kofi

Annan was caused by the “Oil for Food Scandal.” Annan had refused to

Page 20

support a U.S. backed Security Council resolution authorizing an invasion

of Iraq. Annan held that such an invasion would be a violation of the UN’s

charter. Reports say that in response, right wing neoconservatives in the

U.S. government brought forward accusations that there had been

corruption in the UN’s administration of the “Oil for Food” program.

This

program had been created by the Security Council supposedly to alleviate

some of the harmful effects on civilians of the Security Council sanctions

against Iraq.

While the “Oil for Food Scandal” investigation recommended

systemic reforms, there was little evidence of corrupt activity by members

of the UN Secretariat. The investigation created, however, a difficult

environment for Annan and other UN officials.

When the WSJ articles appeared in January 2007 alleging corruption

in the UNDP program, they brought up memories of the difficult situation

created for the UN during the “Oil for Food Scandal.”

South Korean Press Responses to Allegations

Several articles appeared in the South Korean press which analyzed

rather than just repeating the allegations of mismanagement in the UNDP

program in North Korea. One article in JoongAng Ilbo on January 22, for

example, described what happened after the news reports appeared on

January 19. Ban met with the Associate Administrator of the UNDP, Ad

Melkert, and “vowed a thorough investigation.”

The JoongAng Ilbo

article, in addition, however, noted that this accusation came at a

“sensitive time in negotiations” between the U.S. and North Korea.

The article also noted that this action by the UNDP “might be

considered another financial sanction by Washington against North Korea

just as the six-party anti-nuclear talks were expected to resume.” The

reporters reminded readers that the “financial sanctions brought by the

U.S. treasury office on Banco Delta Asia which led to freezing $24 million

of North Korean funds” had become a “major sticking point” causing a

deadlock in the six-party talks.

Similarly, the article in Voice of the People on January 30, 2007,

asked, “Now we have to see who’s intriguing against whom because

somebody is suffering from pain for it. We should not listen to the

shameless and unscrupulous who are trying to curtail humanitarian aid for

Page 21

those who are in need of food.”

An article in OhmyNews International (OMNI) and a report by the

Civil Network for a Peaceful Korea (Peacekorea) explain that UNDP

administrators had denied that there were violations of UNDP policy in the

North Korean program.

Both articles referred to the fact that the Resident

Coordinator of the UNDP Program in North Korea had the authority to

decide the financial practices to follow. Another report by Peacekorea

noted many people think that Ban is “kind of pro American.”

Peacekorea advocated support for restarting the six-party talks and

not letting the U.S. accusations against North Korea divert from support

for the unification of the Korean peninsula. Such a policy is presented as

a long term vision. Also the report explains that development aid to North

Korea is preferable to humanitarian aid, as development aid sets a basis for

self sufficiency, while humanitarian aid is expended after it is given.

The six-party talks did resume and came to an agreement on

February 13, 2007. Peacekorea offered a critique of the conservative South

Korean newspapers which “made comments devaluing the agreement.”

The report explained, “Korea’s major newspapers spread a hostile

perspective of North Korea on the Korean peninsula. This is not helpful

toward gaining denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.” The report

proposes that “Under Kim Jong Il’s dictatorship, North Korea, a weak

nation, has developed nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the threat of

an American attack, as exemplified by the Iraq war, and as a diplomatic

tool for bilateral contact with the U.S.”

Alternative Approach to Ban’s Policy on Korea

Such accounts in the South Korean press demonstrate an alternative

approach to the policy that the Secretary General is implementing

regarding the North Korean situation. For now Ban is not carrying out the

policy he had proposed in the Hankyoreh interview with regard to the

Korean peninsula. To the contrary, in response to pressure from the U.S.

press and the U.S. government, he has adopted a policy which has allowed

the politicization of the UNDP program that was in North Korea. This has

resulted in an audit of previous UNDP programs in North Korea and the

ending of the current UNDP program in North Korea.

Similarly, for more than four months, from February through the end

Page 22

of June, the six-party talks hit a deadlock over the decision by the U.S.

government to find a small bank in Macau in violation of provisions in the

U.S. Patriot Act. The bank complained that it never saw the evidence

against it nor did it have a chance to refute the evidence.

Yet by using

Section 311 of the Patriot Act against this bank, the U.S. Treasury

Department was able to freeze $25 million of North Korean funds and

impede North Korea’s access to the international banking system.

Much of the U.S. press has been promoting a hostile policy toward

North Korea.

Some of the South Korean press echo what appears in the

U.S. press, or reprint articles from the conservative interests who are

trying to impede further negotiations. Other South Korean publications,

however, provide a critique of the hostile attitude of the U.S. press toward

North Korea. For example, an article by Tim Savage in OMNI documents

the internal struggle within the U.S. government between the interests

which are hostile to negotiations with North Korea in contrast to the

efforts at negotiations by Christopher Hill.

Though he has occupied the office of Secretary General for over six

months, Ban has yet to implement the program he proposed before taking

office, the program of active UN support for a negotiated agreement in the

six party talks. Ban’s original plan was to appoint a diplomat or politician

who would be available to intervene when needed to keep the negotiation

process on track. Instead the UN’s Secretariat has become embroiled in

the controversy generated by unsubstantiated charges from the U.S.

mission to the UN about the UNDP funding of North Korea’s UNDP

program.

‘We Can’t Prove a Negative’

The U.S. press continues to echo the U.S. government’s unsubstanti-

ated charges against North Korea and the UNDP, in a way reminiscent of

how the same press supported the unsubstantiated and inaccurate U.S.

government claims that Iraq possessed “Weapons of Mass Destruction”.

The unsubstantiated allegations being spread by the U.S. press about the

UNDP, have the effect of politicizing the UNDP program rather than

providing the public with the accurate information that is needed to

understand the problems and challenges faced by such a program.

David Morrison, the press spokesman for the UNDP, explained that

Page 23

“the point I’m trying to make is we can’t prove a negative,”

at a press

conference held to answer the June 2007 set of unsubstantiated allegations

made by the U.S. mission against the UNDP program in North Korea. This

set of allegations appeared in the U.S. press just before the beginning of

the June UNDP Executive Board meeting in a way reminiscent of how the

previous set of allegations first appeared in the U.S. press just before the

January UNDP Executive Board meeting.

Just as the impossibility of proving a negative created a media

environment in which the U.S. government could falsely claim they had

a justification for a war against Iraq, so a hostile environment is being

created to impede the six-party talks by the unsubstantiated allegations

against North Korea and the UNDP.

Ban’s original plan for the region provided a means to counter those

interests which might impede a negotiated solution to the North Korean

conflict. Much of the U.S. press has maintained a hostile attitude toward

North Korea, even though there are signs that within the U.S. government

there are forces interested in pursuing a negotiated settlement. The South

Korean media landscape, however, presents a broader spectrum of opinion

on what should be done with regard to North Korea, a spectrum of views

which includes support for the policy that Ban originally proposed to

implement for the region when he became Secretary General.

Conclusion

There are many people in Korea and elsewhere, who are watching

Ban Ki-moon and are hopeful that he will do a good job as Secretary

General. As the experience of former Secretary Generals demonstrates,

however, there is a need for a vision to guide him if he is to be able to

fulfill on these expectations.

Notes:

1. [Interview] Next UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. in conversation with Moon

Chung-in, translated by Daniel Rakove, The Hankyoreh. November 3, 2006.

2. “US-DPRK talks end, no comments on resuming 6-party talks”, CCTV.com Jan 19,

2007,

3. “U.S. envoy confident in North Korea nuclear talks”, International Herald Tribune,

January 22, 2007.

Page 24

4. Melanie Kirkpatrick, “United Nations Dictator’s Program”, WSJ, January 19, 2007.

5. “The U.S. Stands in the Way of Pyongyang”, Voice of the People, January 30, 2007.

6. Ibid.

7. Ronda Hauben, “Hardliners Attack UNDP Aid to North Korea:Allegations of

corruption seen as attempt to undermine engagement”, OMNI, February 7, 2007.

8. Thalif Deen, “Will the New UN Chief Stand Up to Big Powers”, Inter Press News

Agency, December 12, 2006.

9. Nam Jeong-ho and Lee Sang-eon, “Report Says Kim Jong-il Cashed in on UN Office”,

JoongAng Ilbo, January 22, 2007.

10. Ibid, Voice of the People.

11. Ronda Hauben, “Hardliners Attack UNDP Aid to North Korea Allegations of

corruption seen as attempt to undermine engagement”, OMNI, February7, 2007. See also:

Soohyun Lee, “UNDP’s Aid Toward North Korea”, peacekorea, January 23, 2007.

12. Soohyun Lee, UNDP’s aid toward North Korea, peacekorea, February 13, 2007.

13. Ibid.

14. Ji-Hyun Lee, “The Ghost of Anti-communism Reflected in South Korean Media”,

peacekorea , May 7, 2007.

15. Ibid.

16. Ronda Hauben, “North Korea’s $25 Million and Banco Delta Asia: Another abuse

under the U.S. Patriot Act (2001)”, OMNI, March 21, 2007.

17. The McClatchy Newspapers have been an exception. See for example articles like

“Bank owner disputes money-laundering allegations” Kevin G. Hall about the BDA

affair.

18. Tim Savage, “Six-Party Talks Resume: Expectations high for progress in Beijing,”

OMNI, February 8, 2007.

19. David Morrison, Press Conference, June 11, 2007, See Minutes: 38:46.

20. Ronda Hauben, “Weapons of Mass Destruction Syndrome and the Press [Analysis]

How does one prove a negative?”, OMNI, June 24, 2007.

[Editor’s note: The following article first appeared in OhmyNews International on March

7, 2007]

U.S., North Korea Move to Open Ties

by Ronda Hauben

“This process, not unlike a video game, gets more and more difficult

as you get to different levels,” said Christopher Hill, U.S. Assistant Sec-

retary of State, speaking at a press conference held at the Foreign Press

Page 25

Center in New York City shortly after he had finished two days of

meetings with North Korea’s lead negotiator for the Six-Party Talks, Kim

Kye-gwan. Hill is the chief negotiator for the U.S. The Six-Party Talks

include the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan

Hill characterized the activities of the past two days as “good

discussions” which were “very comprehensive.” Both sides were

optimistic that they would get through the first 60-day period’s tasks that

were outlined in the Feb. 13 agreement signed in Beijing.

A reason for the optimism, Hill explained, was that his talks with

Kim not only discussed the issues that had to be resolved at this 30-day

stage, but they also explored what they would need to do to go forward

after the 60-day period, which will end in mid-April.

Hill explained that five working groups have been set up. His

working group with Kim on normalizing U.S.-North Korean relations

finished their tasks within the 30-day time schedule that they had set for

the five groups to begin their process. Another group, the bilateral group

between North Korea and Japan will meet in Hanoi and the three other

groups will be meeting in Beijing.

Hill was interested in the efforts to get an agreement between the

U.S. and North Korea in the 1990s and had learned some of the back-

ground from his discussions with Kim.

A focus of their talks, Hill explained, was on the upcoming meetings

that would take place with the six parties in Beijing and how to make

those productive. “The ministers from each of the six parties to the talks

will be meeting in Beijing then and assessing where we will go the next

60 days,” Hill said.

Hill was asked how this negotiation was different from previous ones

with North Korea. He described how the tight deadlines were one aspect.

Another was that the agreement involved the six parties and the bilateral

talks between the U.S. and North Korea and the other parties were within

this framework.

Also Hill credited the close work between the U.S. and China for

some of the progress. Not only did the U.S. and China have the common

goal of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, he explained, but also the

two countries shared a similar strategy and even tactics. Negotiators from

both countries worked closely together, even on the text for the agreement.

Page 26

When he was asked, “What support will you have that will keep this

on track?” Hill replied that he had tremendous support from Secretary of

State Condoleeza Rice. She kept on top of all the details and he would be

briefing her shortly on the recent discussions. “I feel I’ve got a lot of

support,” he said, “and as long as I can show some results I’ll get more

support. Diplomatic negotiation is sort of like managing a baseball game.

As long as you win, everyone’s happy.”

Hill emphasized that there would be the need to keep the process

moving and showing some progress.

When asked if he had been invited to visit North Korea, Hill said that

his counterpart had raised the idea in a general sense but nothing specific

had been discussed as they focused on Beijing and the upcoming round of

Six-Party Talks.

With regard to how to manage the denuclearization of the Korean

peninsula, Hill said they discussed how to get experts in on the matter.

There would need to be some technical discussions. It was a good step,

Hill said, that Director General Mohamed El-Baradei of the International

Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had been invited to North Korea and was

planning a trip soon.

Hill indicated that the problem with Banco Delta Asia would be

solved soon. The U.S. has committed itself to find a solution within the

first 30-day period.

Hill stressed that the historical background of the particular situation

with North Korea was important to keep in mind and not to draw too many

analogies with other situations.

He compared the negotiations to someone always pushing a rock

uphill, and the rock always seems to come down to the base of the hill.

The discussion he just had with Ambassador Kim, Hill said, reflected the

sense that “we can get through this.” He had been encouraged by his

counterpart to look ahead.

Because the negotiators are getting to know each other from so many

different meetings, when issues come up, they don’t need to reiterate

points. That way they are able to cover more ground.

The atmosphere in the room during the press conference captured

some of the excitement that the negotiations between Hill and Kim were

another step toward the fulfillment of the September 2005 Six-Party

Page 27

agreement. This represents significant activity toward the peaceful

resolution of the hostility between the U.S. and North Korea that has

lingered for the past 50 years, since the days of the Korean war.

[Editor’s note: The following article appeared in OhmyNews International on March 21,

2007]

North Korea’s $25 Million and Banco

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.”

The original purpose was allegedly related to the prevention,

detection and prosecution of money laundering 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.

Page 28

Attorneys, have been identified as being used by the Bush administration

for expanding and abusing executive 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

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 evi-

dence 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

Macau, to freeze substantial financial assets of North Korea and also to

deny North Korea access to the international banking system.

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.

Invoking Section 311 against the BDA effectively sabotaged the

implementation of the Six-Party agreement of September 2005 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.

Page 29

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

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.

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 Macau 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.

Page 30

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-

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 process to a video game. He warned: “This

process, not unlike a video game gets more and more difficult as you get

to different levels.”

Notes:

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.Warren P Strobel, “Administration Reconsiders Some North Korea Restrictions.”

5. Ronda Hauben, “U.S., North Korea Move to Open Ties,” OhmyNews, March 7, 2007,

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn16-1.pdf, pp. 13-15.

[Editor’s note: The following article first appeared in OhmyNews International on May

19, 2007]

Page 31

Behind the Blacklisting of Banco Delta

Asia

by Ronda Hauben

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, speaking at the

Korea Society’s 50

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.

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.

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

Page 32

the issue of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.”

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.”

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

Page 33

learned that his bank was being charged as a bank engaged in “illicit

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.”

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.

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 Macau 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.”

In the substantial and prolific analysis of the BDA problem that has

Page 34

been developed on the blog “China Matters”, there is the assessment that

North Korea has legitimate financial activity and that the BDA was

legitimately serving as one of the banks for that activity. Even with the

UN’s sanctions, it was not appropriate to target for blacklisting the

legitimate financial activities of North Korea. The sanctions that the UN-

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

“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, Nonproliferation, and Trade on April 18,

2007, explaining why Banco Delta was chosen to be blacklisted from the

international banking system:

“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

investigation about why BDA has been targeted and what is behind this

Page 35

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.

Notes:

1. Ronda Hauben, “North Korea’s $25 Million and Banco Delta Asia,” OhmyNews,

March 7, 2007,

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn16-1.pdf, pp. 15-16.

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.

4. China Matters Blogspot, “Bank owner disputes money-laundering allegations.”

http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2007/05/stanley-au-makes-his-case-for-banco.html.

5. Statement of Mr. Stanley Au in Support of Petition to Revoke Rule Imposing Special

Measures Against Banco Delta Asia, p. 7.

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.

7. Petition of Mr. Stanley Au and Delta Asia Group (Holdings) Ltd. to Rescind Final

Rule, p. 12.

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.

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

of government creates need for investigative news.”

https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0705/msg00006.html.

Page 36

The above article can be seen at:

https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-policy-forum/behind-the-blacklisting-of-banco-del

ta-asia/

[Editor’s Note: The following article first appeared on OhmyNews on July 12, 2006.]

Netizens Are Critical to

Citizen Journalism

by Ronda Hauben

It is with a smile that I prepare today to go to Korea and the 2006

OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters’ Forum.

When leaving the forum last year I remember having a conversation

with one of the citizen reporters. She said she had been thinking and felt

that perhaps one of the most important aspects of citizen journalism was

that there are netizens, people online who have find that the Internet is

helpful in their efforts and desire to make the world a better place.

She felt that it was from the netizens that the significant aspects of

citizen journalism will develop. She told me she wanted to be sure to share

this with me before she left the forum.

I first came to learn about OhmyNews in 2003 when I saw an article

in the Financial Times that said the “netizens” in South Korea had made

it possible to elect the President of the country. This made me curious and

I wanted to learn what I could about what had happened.

From Korean friends online and off I came to know about

OhmyNews. A Korean friend showed me the Korean edition, which was

all there was in 2003, and she translated some of the many comments there

were on different articles.

She encouraged me to write to founder Oh Yeon-ho with my

questions about OhmyNews.

I probably did try to write an email and sent it, but don’t remember

exactly and didn’t at the time get an answer. Instead Mr. Oh, it seems, was

preparing to do an English edition so that the many people who were

Page 37

interested in OhmyNews but who couldn’t read Korean would still get an

idea of the idea of citizen journalism.

A little while later, a netizen I met online said she would submit an

article I had written about the Howard Dean campaign in the U.S. to

OhmyNews. In it I compared Dean’s election campaign to the campaign

for the presidency of South Korea. She translated it into Korean, and it

appeared in both English and Korean in an issue of the Korean Ohmy-

News in March of 2004.

This all raises an important question for me that I hope will be

considered at the 2006 forum: How is the spread of OhmyNews and

OhmyNews International connected to the fight for democracy? The fact

that the birth of the Korean edition of OMN was connected to the

continuing fight for democracy in South Korea seems an important aspect

of any effort to spread the lessons from the Korean OhmyNews to other

publications and to other countries.

The netizens of South Korea who contributed their articles as citizen

reporters when OMN began and who continued to contribute the articles

as it grew, are a factor that is to be considered and understood. Also, it

seems there was a staff for the newspaper which not only encouraged the

submissions, but who also helped to cover the developments in the fight

for more democracy in Korea for the young newspaper.

I have found that learning about and understanding the developments

in the Korean fight for more democracy is an encouragement to continue

working with OhmyNews. I often wish that OhmyNews would have more

of the articles from the Korean version of the newspaper translated into

English to be part of the English edition. That way there would be more

knowledge of what is happening in Korea among those who read and write

for the International edition of the newspaper.

Next year is the 20

anniversary of the victory of the 1987 revolution

in South Korea. Perhaps in honor of this event OhmyNews can find a way

to share more of the events of the Korean democratization efforts with

those who can only read the English edition.

I often wonder if there is any way there could be an American

version of OhmyNews which would be a champion in the fight against the

conservative press and politics that dominate U.S. society. It seems so

difficult to consider this possibility here in the U.S. as the conservative

Page 38

forces are so strong and pervasive.

It seems that they would find a way to impose the need to make

money on whatever was created, rather than recognizing the need to have

a social purpose as the critical thrust. This is why I feel it is so important

to have some knowledge of how OhmyNews grew out of the progressive

movement in South Korea. It is important to remember that an early goal

of Mr. Oh was to create a media culture in which “the quality of news

determined whether it won or lost,” not the power and prestige of the

media organization that printed the article.

Last year’s forum was a very memorable experience. There are many

special events I recall, but the most special was after I gave the brief talk

I had been invited to give. Several citizen reporters for the Korean edition

of OhmyNews came to embrace me and thank me for the talk. The talk I

gave was about the online research of Michael Hauben in 1992-1993

which discovered that the Net was encouraging people to be able to

participate as citizens in a way previously impossible.

This research – observing what was developing on the Net – resulted

in the concept of “netizen.” The continuing spread of the Net and the

netizens are symbolized by “netizens” I met during last year’s OMNI

forum. They, in turn, are a tribute to and an encouragement for the spread

of OMNI’s great experiment.

[Editor’s Note: The following article first appeared in OhmyNews International on

October 24, 2006.]

The Future of the Korean Peninsula

by Ronda Hauben

A seminar about the problems of the Korean Peninsula with the

Korean Ambassador to the UN, Choi Young-jin, was held at Columbia

University in New York, on Thursday, Oct. 19.

Ambassador Choi opened

the seminar by presenting what he proposed as a framework in which to

understand the current problems facing the peninsula, the primary one of

Page 39

which is how to understand North Korea.

The world, Choi proposed, is divided into countries that are

interdependent or isolated. The U.S. is the most interdependent country in

the world. He gave North Korea as an example of an isolated country.

What is happening in the Korean peninsula, he said, is a microcosm of the

problems the world is facing in the 21

century.

There is a North–South divide, and the Korean peninsula is

characteristic of this divide, only the characteristics that are represented

by countries of the North and South are reversed. The divide is one of

“haves” and “have nots.” North Korea is an example of the countries of

the South, which are countries in economic difficulty. At the heart of the

question of North Korea, Choi proposed, is the dilemma of “political

survival and economic revival.”

North Korea’s factories are only running at 20-30 percent of

capacity. Electricity production is a problem. North Korea, he explained,

cannot survive such economic difficulties. How then is it possible to

revive its economy? The only way, Choi explained, was to accept trade.

Like Vietnam, North Korea needs to open up its society and accept trade

with other countries. According to Choi, the threat for North Korea is an

internal threat, the threat of self-imposed isolation.

Choi proposed, however, that North Korea, on its own could not

choose to change this situation. That unless a peaceful means could be

found to help change the situation, the problem faced by North Korea

becomes the problem of the international community.

“How do you manage this complex problem?” he asked. He

proposed two different approaches, one that the U.S. was pursuing and one

that China was taking. The U.S., he explained, is geographically distant

from North Korea and so it would not be affected if there was a clash with

North Korea. Thus the U.S. position was to promote “containment with

engagement.” The U.S. position is that North Korea cannot be accepted as

a nuclear state. It advocated sanctions including the interdiction of North

Korean cargo suspected of being related to its nuclear program.

What if, however, it was Mexico not North Korea that had become

a nuclear state and threatened to sell nuclear technology to other coun-

tries? If the country the U.S. was dealing with was geographically closer

to the U.S., what would be the U.S. policy then? Would the U.S. accept

Page 40

interdiction of suspected cargo if it could lead to a military clash?

Choi described the second approach, the approach that China was

taking. Since China is so close, if a clash happened, the first victim would

be China not the U.S. Similarly, South Korea is geographically close to

North Korea. China and South Korea have a lot to lose if something

happens. That is why China insisted that the sanctions not be military, but

only under Article 41 of Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter. Also

China favored that the interdiction of suspected cargo would not be

“mandatory” but “as necessary.”

The situation, however, Choi explained, is murky. He asked if

North Korea knows what it wants. Also for China and South Korea the

desire is that North Korea not be a nuclear state. They want co-existence

and that the Korean peninsula be a nuclear free peninsula. He also raised

the question of whether the other countries who had been involved in the

six-party talks had a strategy. No country appeared to have a clear

strategy. The situation appeared dangerous because an explosion would

affect the whole region.

The program was opened for questions from the people attending

the seminar. The first question was about an article in the Oct. 16 issue of

the German publication Der Spiegel. The writer quoted an anonymous

source that said that North Korea had asked China to guarantee that if it

were attacked, it would retaliate on behalf of North Korea. North Korea

would have stopped developing its nuclear weapons if the Chinese had

agreed to this request. The question was whether Choi knew anything

about this report.

Choi’s response was that he didn’t know anything about this report

but that he didn’t think that North Korea saw its major problem as

security. His view was that North Korea wanted economic assistance,

economic cash.

Professor Samuel Kim, who had introduced the speaker, disagreed

that North Korea was not concerned with its national security. Kim

referred to an account by Ambassador Charles “Jack” Pritchard. Pritchard

said that he was struck by something that Kim Jong Il said to Madeleine

Albright about the importance of security to North Korea. When compar-

ing the experience of China and North Korea regarding economic

development, Kim Jong Il explained that China had been able to focus its

Page 41

resources on economic development because it didn’t face any security

threat. North Korea, however, saw the U.S. as threatening its security and

so could not focus its efforts on economic development. North Korea felt

it was under a U.S. nuclear threat, and had been for the past 50 years,

going back to the period of the Korean War.

Responding to a comment that North Korea had not supported

coming to an agreement in the 2005 six-party talks, Professor Kim

explained that it was the U.S. not North Korea that was the problem. No

sooner was the ink dry, the U.S. imposed financial sanctions on North

Korea. These sanctions created a financial stranglehold. Even during the

talks, it was the U.S. that was the holdout. It took the U.S. a few days to

sign the agreement reached during the six-party talks, and it only did so

when it was threatened that the fact it was the U.S. which was delaying the

signing of the agreement would be made public.

Answering a question about the fact that a significant percentage

of the South Korean population sees the U.S. as responsible for the North

Korean nuclear test, Choi explained that people in South Korea are

divided over how to deal with the situation. The official position of the

URI party in South Korea, is that the U.S. is to blame. Many people in

South Korea think of North Korea as a brother. Others see the U.S. as an

ally and North Korea as an enemy. The framework he gave at the

beginning of the seminar, however, is intended to establish that there is a

genuine problem and that the U.S. is forced to work within the context of

this genuine problem.

Choi was asked whether it would help that the new secretary-

general of the United Nations was from South Korea. He answered that he

believed it would definitely help as South Korea has an understanding of

the need to work with North Korea.

In response to the question whether any country had previously

changed from pursuing nuclear ambitions because of sanctions, some

examples were given of countries like Brazil and Argentina which

responded to packages that included security guarantees and economic

incentives. Another comment made by a participant in the seminar was

that it was important that South Korea continue its economic relations with

North Korea. It was important for North Korea to be able to make a

legitimate living exporting legitimate products and not be forced by

Page 42

sanctions or a boycott to turn to military exports.

One of the problems raised during the question period was that

North Korea is looking toward the U.S. not South Korea for a way to solve

the problems. Criticism of the U.S. was mounting for not being willing to

talk with North Korea. The North Korean focus on the U.S. could be seen

perhaps as a fatal attraction.

Responding to the characterization of North Korea as having

trouble making strategic decisions, Professor Kim expressed his dis-

agreement. He pointed to the decision by North Korea in 1994 to enter

into the Agreed Framework with the U.S., and then the decision to launch

the missile test, and the test of a nuclear weapon. These were offered as

examples that North Korea was quite capable of making what it deemed

strategic decisions.

The seminar provided the participants with an opportunity to

exchange views and concerns over what is happening in Northeast Asia.

The issues were considered with a seriousness and concern that was

encouraging. The discussion in the seminar resulted in recognition of

North Korea's concern over the threat it perceives from the U.S., both

militarily and economically. The actions of the U.S. toward North Korea

coupled with the fact that North Korea therefore feels the need to have a

way to respond to the hostile acts, results in a tense situation. The nations

that share geographic proximity with North Korea find themselves faced

with an increasingly unstable situation. The actions of the U.S. and the

pressures from the U.S. on the countries that are in geographic proximity

to North Korea, have as their result intensified instability rather than the

amelioration of the instability.

The seminar demonstrated the importance of serious discussion

among those who are concerned for the safety and stability of the Korean

Peninsula. Ambassador Choi Young-jin, Professor Samuel Kim, and those

who attended the seminar, all contributed to creating an environment

where fruitful discussion was welcomed. This is an encouraging sign that

with the efforts of concerned people, perhaps the issues involved can be

clarified, and the needed action can be taken to support a just resolution

of the problems that have contributed to the current crisis.

Page 43

[Editor’s Note: The following article first appeared in Telepolis on August 13, 2006. The

title on Telepolis is “The OMNI Citizen Reporter's Forum”.]

Citizen Journalism, Past and Future

by Ronda Hauben

I recently returned from visiting Korea and attending the

OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters’ Forum 2006. It was the

second such forum. (Read more here.) OhmyNews invited 60 citizen

reporters or others who were involved with citizen journalism. The forum

itself was held July 12-15.

The forum featured a range of speakers. Some like Timothy Lord

of Slashdot.com and Craig Newmark of Craigslist.com are active in

various online activities in the U.S., even if they are not directly connected

with citizen journalism. Also, there were sessions of talks by citizen

reporters from different countries around the world. All the formal

sessions of the forum are online at the OhmyNews Website.

The context in which OhmyNews was created is important to keep

in mind when thinking about the forum and the trend of citizen journalism

that OhmyNews has pioneered. South Korea leads the world in the spread

of broadband Internet access to its population. Over 80 percent of

households have broadband connections at home. Online discussion and

activity play a prominent role among Korean netizens and are a catalyst

for offline actions. (Read more here.)

The South Korean struggle for democracy continues after its

relatively recent victory in the June 1987 democratic revolution over the

military junta. The creation of the Korean edition of OhmyNews in 2000

was seen as a part of the struggle for more democracy and against the con-

servative forces that continue to be active in Korean politics and society.

When I arrived in Korea on Wednesday, July 12, there was a major

demonstration in downtown Seoul protesting the Korean-U.S. negotiations

over a bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The demonstration is said

to have included 50,000 protesters despite the heavy rains and despite the

fact that there were approximately 20,000 Korean police surrounding the

demonstration site.

A week later the FTA talks in Seoul broke down temporarily to the

Page 44

relief of many in Korea. Opposition to the FTA is strong due to concerns

about the harmful impact many believe a free trade agreement with the

U.S. will have on the Korean economy. (Read more here.) The large anti-

FTA demonstration was a sign of the continuing struggle for democracy

in Korea.

When the OhmyNews International forum opened on Wednesday

evening, we were told that citizen reporters from 20 countries were

attending the forum. And that the number of countries in which Ohmy-

News has citizen reporters increased from 50 the previous year to 91.

There are currently 1,200 citizen reporters for the international edition,

and the most recent who registered at the time were from Lebanon and

Cuba.

An investment in OhmyNews International by the Japanese

company Softbank, announced a few months earlier, was intended in part

to make it possible to spread the OhmyNews model to other countries.

OhmyNews is planning to launch an OhmyNews Japan on Aug. 28 as its

first effort to develop a version of OhmyNews in another country.

I later learned from the editor-in-chief of the international edition,

Hong Eun-taek, that there is a thought about increasing articles from little

reported areas of the world and offering OhmyNews as a newswire to

interested media. An announcement at the Wednesday evening session of

the forum explained that the International Herald Tribune newspaper

(IHT) will include feeds of three sections of OhmyNews in its online

edition, the “sports” section, “entertainment” section, and the “technol-

ogy” section. Also, 10 headlines from IHT appear on the front pages of

OhmyNews.

On Thursday, the first full day of the forum, I was fortunate to have

lunch with Professor Yoon Young-chul, a journalism professor from

Yonsei University. He introduced me to one of his former students. She

is a researcher doing her Ph.D. thesis on the role of the Korean edition of

OhmyNews in initiating the candlelight demonstrations in 2002.

The role that OhmyNews has played in the democratic struggles in

Korea and similarly the role that the democratic struggles have played in

the evolution of OhmyNews is an important factor in the origin and

development of the online newspaper. This was the subject we discussed

during the lunch breaks.

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OhmyNews developed in Korea as an online media able to

challenge the entrenched conservative press. What are the elements of

OhmyNews that made it possible to succeed in this endeavor? One aspect

I learned from the researcher, was the role played by Oh Yeon-ho, the

founder of OhmyNews. When he announced he would start OhmyNews,

she explained, he was already well known and respected by progressive

people who were therefore willing to be part of the effort. (Read more

here.) Hence he was a person who was able to get the needed netizen

support for OhmyNews from its earliest days.

Oh Yeon-ho's opening remarks at the forum helped to highlight the

democratic tradition of the Website. He explained that the key to spread-

ing the OhmyNews model was to find citizen reporters who were

“passionately committed to social change and reporting.” It is these citizen

reporters, he said, who “make our project possible.”

This issue was again raised during Session 7 held on Friday, July

14. In this session, there were presentations about two citizen reporter sites

which had been inspired by OhmyNews.

The Danish site Flix.dk was started in 2003 after its founder, Erik

Larsen, a journalist and writer, read an article about OhmyNews in Wired

magazine. This was before the English edition of OhmyNews. Larsen went

to a Korean translator to learn as much as he could about the site. In

November 2003 he started Flix.dk with two colleagues. Flix.dk functions

on a nonprofit basis though Larsen constantly faces the need to raise

adequate funds to keep going. But Larsen is also wary of being tied to a

business model. He feels it is important to be able to learn and build on the

actual developments as they unfold on Flix.dk.

Also during Session 7, Michael Weiss presented his Israeli Website

Scoop.co.il. Weiss started Scoop.co.il after he returned to Israel from the

OhmyNews forum last year. He was able to get funding from a venture

capitalist for his startup.

Both Larsen and Weiss said they planned to open an English

section of their online sites. As soon as Larsen returned to Denmark after

the OMNI forum, a small English section was set up.

Probably the most critical issue facing the Korean OhmyNews,

according to people I spoke with, was how the frustration among

progressive people in Korea would affect OhmyNews’ future. Low voter

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turnout in the recent local elections resulted in the victory of the candi-

dates from the Grand National Party (GNP), a conservative coalition.

Many young people and other progressive forces were part of the

democratic coalition that backed the relatively unknown politician Roh

Moo-hyun for the presidency in 2002. OhmyNews played an important

role in the successful election campaign. After Roh won the election, how-

ever, many of those who were part of his online election campaign were

disappointed by the neoliberal policies of his administration.

For some in the progressive community in Korea, this disappoint-

ment may be translated into disillusionment with politics. Others,

however, are actively considering what lessons can be learned from recent

events.

The situation in Korea is dynamic. The widespread broadband

internet access and cell phone use means that there is a vibrant online

community. Previously many of the democratic forces utilized the Internet

in their struggles challenging the offline institutions and their influence.

More recently, however, conservative forces are more and more using the

Internet. Thus some feel that the online environment is becoming ever