The past week has been an eventful one for the Korean Peninsula: North Korea set off its nuke, and South Korean Ban Ki-Moon was appointed the UN’s new Secretary-General.  So, who is this Ban Ki-Moon fellow and why did he get the job?  Barbara Amiel has an answer.

Who better to defuse the 2006 nuclear crisis with North Korea, as news commentators explained to their viewers, but the so aptly named Ban? In 1992, he served as vice-chairman of the South-North Joint Nuclear Control Commission after the adoption of North and South Korea's "Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," and in 1999 he was elected chairman of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive-Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (winningly known as CTBTO PrepCom). Fourteen years of presiding over a totally failed policy whose most lethal weapons were its incomprehensible acronyms. Easy to see why hands-down he knocked out all competition for the job.

Ban seems to be settling right into his new position.  In some of his first statements as Secretary-General, he pledged “performance, not words” and said, “I’m no pushover”.  As examples of “decisive decisions”, he said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should talk to North Korea and urged North Korea to comply with the UN’s sanctions resolution.  Oh, and he also warned North Korea of “consequences” if it goes ahead with a second nuclear bomb test.

I guess the “performance” part comes later.

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