Claudia Rosett on the Korean Connection; Maurice Strong’s ‘Special Interest’ in Building Power Plants in North and South Korea

I can’t even begin to scratch the detail that Ms. Rosett has added to our knowledge of the Korean Connection with her most recent Oil-For-Food article. For some time, my interest in Oil-For-Food has focused in on Tongsun Park, who was born in North Korea, and Maurice Strong, Kofi Annan’s former Special Envoy to North Korea. Strong resigned from that position last May, after news reports named him as the possible recipient of some of Saddam Hussein’s bribe money, conveyed via Park. Strong denies taking Saddam’s money and claims no connection to a $1 million payment to a company set up by Strong’s son, and which folded soon thereafter.

Strong admits to having used Park as an informal advisor on North Korea policy, and was almost dead-silent on human rights in the North until his resignation in disgrace. I’ve wondered ever since whether something more than the U.N.’s climate of moral equivalence explains that. Well, just maybe.

For example, in a footnote on page 100, volume II, Volcker’s Sept. 7 report informs us that during that period Morden sent a letter dated Oct. 16, 1996, to both Strong and Park “requesting on behalf of the Canadian atomic energy company the support of Mr. Strong and Mr. Park for the sale of ‘Candu 9’ nuclear reactors during their upcoming meetings in Korea with Korean leaders.” The Volcker report adds that the 1996 trip made by Strong and Park to Korea was not related to Oil-for-Food.

Later, as U.N. Special Envoy, Strong dropped this interesting comment:

I might say that I have taken special interest in the energy and agricultural sectors and had the privilege of co-chairing the meeting in Geneva in 1998 at which the DPRK presented to the international community its Agricultural Recovery and Environment Program now referred to as the Agriculture Rehabilitation and Environment Protection Program.

Let me be the first to say that all of this is far from sufficient to convict anyone, but it merits further examination whether more substantial evidence suggests that Strong operated under a conflict of interest as Special Envoy. The 1996 trip would have been a year before the election of Kim Dae Jung and the beginning of South Korea’s unconditional appeasement of the North. I saw no references to Stong’s position as Special Envoy earlier than 2003, long after the Korea trip. Still, reactors are not procured, much less built, in a day, and involve amounts that do not flutter easily out of one’s mind. None of us needs to guess what South Korea might have wanted from Strong, who would have been in an extraordinary position to influence the U.N.’s North Korea policies. Smoke, but no fire yet.

With the exception of the picture of the $988,000 check from the Iraqi Housing Ministry to “Mr. M. Strong,” of course. That’s interesting enough, but my personal curiosity is about the impact (if any) of these currupt and incestuous relationships on the U.N.’s apathy to human rights in North Korea.

I suspect we haven’t heard the last of this.