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U.N. and South Korea

Posted September. 25, 2015 09:46,   

한국어

British historian John Keegan said that there were four international conferences that changed the world since the modern times – the 1648 Congress of Westphalia after the Thirty Years` War, the 1815 Congress of Vienna after the Napoleonic Wars, the 1919 Congress Of Versailles after World War I, and the 1945 San Francisco Conference after World War II. The San Francisco Conference in June 1945 adopted the United Nations Charter, which led to the founding of the U.N. on October 24 in the same year.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the U.N.`s founding as well as South Korea`s liberation from Japan`s colonial rule and national division. South Korean President Park Geun-hye will deliver a speech at the 70th General Assembly on September 28. We cannot think of South Korea without the U.N. The U.S.-Soviet Joint Commission`s procedure for Korea`s independence failed to make progress due to a collision between the two powers, before being transferred to the U.N. The Republic of Korea (South Korea) is the only legitimate government on the Korean Peninsula that was established by an election supervised by the U.N. When the South was invaded by North Korea, the U.N. troops helped the South.

South Korea once was so grateful for the U.N. that it made the founding anniversary of the international body a national holiday. When the U.N. allowed the North to join a U.N. organization in 1976 although the South was not accepted by the U.N. as a member states, then South Korean President Park Chung-hee removed the U.N.`s day from the list of the country`s national holiday. The South was able to gain U.N. membership in 1991 on the condition that the North joined the international body at the same time. The South had to swallow its pride as the only legitimate government on the Korean Peninsula and accepted the condition for the sake of world peace.

World War II was the most horrible war in human history. The U.N. was established to prevent the recurrence of such a war. Looking back the past seven decades, the U.N. functioned relatively well in preventing the third world war, although it failed to deter local wars such as the Vietnam War. All the regimes of Westphalia, Vienna and Versailles fell in the end. However, the U.N. was born amid the fear of a nuclear war. The sense of crisis that failure to prevent a nuclear war would lead to the annihilation of the humankind was the power that kept the U.N. running.



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