On Africa's Day, Ban and Lee Myung-bak Walk Is For Koreans Only, UN Says, Darfur Unanswered
By Matthew Russell Lee 
April 16, 2008
The Inner City Press 
Original Source: http://www.innercitypress.com/un2visits041608.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 16 -- As African presidents and prime minister gathered in the Security Council chamber to debate the Continent, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was upstairs holding a meeting with the president of South Korea. Half an hour later he emerged with a scrum of security to parade past the stakeout, where Seoul-based media had been assembled. How did the meeting go? one reporter asked. 
   Inner City Press followed-up, Did you discuss Darfur? Is South Korea going to send peacekeeping troops to Sudan? Lee Myung-bak smiled and proceeded down the hall.  Dozens of reporters, at least three of them not from the Korean peninsula, followed. A UN official tried to profile and separate the press. This is for Koreans only, Inner City Press was told. That is how they wanted it.
  Earlier this week Inner City Press asked Ban's spokesperson to confirm that South Korea has an advance team in Darfur, with an eye toward sending troops. At Wednesday's noon briefing, Ban's spokesperson said she has not been able to confirm that. The Korea Times of April 11 reported that the government dispatched an on-site inspection team Friday to Sudan's Darfur region to prepare for the possible deployment of peacekeeping troops there, an official of the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Can such dispatching take place with no notice to the UN? 
Footnotes: 1) More cynical observers wonder what weight Mr. Ban might give to raising Seoul's profile with a Darfur deployment, and what might be the quid for such a quo.
2) Last week they did a walk-through, from which the press was also pushed-back. So this walk down the hall in the midst of Africa's day was carefully scripted. Limiting access by nationality, then, was not invented on the fly. While perhaps proposed by the South Korean mission, it was implemented by Ban Ki-moon's UN.