N. Korea's inclusion reveals U.N. flaw
By Claudia Rosett
The Philadelphia Inquirer
February 6, 2007
Later this month, the United Nations Secretariat will hold its yearly exam to recruit staff from among member states for the U.N.'s worldwide professional service. Among those now eligible are nationals of North Korea.
Which raises a question unlikely to be included in this exam: What is North Korea doing in the U.N. in the first place? If recruiting North Koreans to work inside the U.N. sounds like a good way to integrate the rogue regime of Kim Jong Il into civilized and responsible company, think again. This exam is a portal to lifetime U.N. employment, with perquisites, access and license for world travel under the auspices of an organization supported in large part by U.S. taxpayer money and dedicated (in theory) to guarding, first and foremost, the security of peace-loving states.
In the world's most tightly controlled state, the only way to take this exam would be with the approval of Kim's government. In other words, in offering this exam to North Koreans, the U.N. Secretariat is in effect recruiting Pyongyang's agents into its civil service.
Asked how many North Koreans are taking the exam this year, a U.N. staffer in the human-resources department gives a ritual U.N. answer: "We are working in cooperation with member states, and member states may not be happy if we provide that information." Will North Koreans be taking it? "We hope so," says this diligent bureaucrat.
As threats from North Korea go, potential infestation of the U.N. Secretariat may seem the least of our problems. More urgent is Kim's trafficking and testing of missiles, his production of nuclear bombs, and the horrible reality that with the full knowledge of the world, his government, which let millions of its people starve to death in the last 15 years, also runs prison camps which for brutality rival Stalin's gulag. The United States and some allies have also been trying to contend with evidence against Kim's government that includes counterfeiting of U.S. currency, state peddling of narcotics, profiteering from forced labor, and a program in which Japanese citizens were kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s. If any regime in the world qualifies as "rogue," not to mention "monstrous," this is it.
But what this modest little U.N. exam illustrates is the extent to which bureaucracy, once it grinds into action, has a tendency - especially at the U.N. - to shrug off even the worst outrages. Kim runs a police state in which people are hauled off to be tortured, worked to death, or summarily executed for dissent. Meanwhile, U.N. officials file reports on their plans to pump resources into North Korea to promote "a national sustainable development strategy" or "Capacity Building for Enhanced Development Cooperation."
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Senator Tom Coburn
Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security
340 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-2254 Fax: 202-228-3796
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