by
John Barry Kotch
[Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS), Hanyang University]
posted July 18, 2003
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This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice Accords. It also offers an excellent opportunity to reflect on both the role and future of the United Nations Command (UNC) in Korea, created at the onset of hostilities to coordinate military assistance to the Republic of Korea.
The UN Security Council resolution recommending the creation of a unified command e.g. the United Nations Command on July 7, 1950 was the last of three successive resolutions triggered by the North Korean invasion of South Korea.(1) Its operative paragraphs called upon the United States to coordinate offers of assistance to Korea and take command of the military action on behalf of UN contributor nations.(2) If the previous June 25 and 27 resolution signaled the willingness of the international community to “render every assistance” to the Republic of Korea in confronting an act of naked aggression, the historical significance of the July 7 resolution lay in its embodiment of the concept of collective security underpinning the United Nations Charter and, in particular, its Chapter VII provisions.
Specifically, the North Korean attack on South Korea on June 25, 1950 was perceived at the time as an attack not only by one state against its neighbor, but by the Soviet Union against the free world. The UN Command was the designated instrumentality to meet that attack and turn it back.
However, reality was more complex and while the attack was indeed planned and directed by the Soviet Union, it was instigated and executed by North Korea to achieve Korean unification by force of arms, not by a Soviet Union on the march to world conquest. The distinction is important and its impact in terms of American foreign policy was far-reaching. Thus, the perception of the North Korean invasion as Soviet orchestrated rather than homegrown led to the largest American military buildup since World War II and the cementing of the NATO alliance in Europe. (3)
Two weeks after the passage of the July 7, 1950 Security Council Resolution, the
UN Command (the unified command) was formally established in Tokyo on July 24, 1950.(4) In the fortnight interval and in the face of a rapidly deteriorating military situation, South Korean forces were formally placed under the U.S. operational control of General Douglas MacArthur, the U.S. Far Eastern Commander, following an exchange of letters with South Korean President Syngman Rhee, where they remain today.(5)
In addition to the United States and South Korea, fourteen other UN members, ranging from Australia and the Philippines to Thailand and Turkey, contributed men and arms to the combined effort.(6) At the height of the Korean conflict, more than a million men served under the UN Command, and while the overwhelming majority were Korean, more than a quarter-million U.S. and one-hundred thousand Commonwealth troops also took part, as well as smaller contingents from other nations.
Beside blunting, thwarting, and hurling back the initial North Korean onslaught, the UN Command took on additional roles and responsibilities, both during the conflict (1950-1953) and in the postwar period, that were not foreseen at its inception. These included the military occupation of most of North Korea along with parallel political measures designed to bring about a unified, democratic, and independent Korea (goals foreclosed by subsequent Chinese intervention);(7) the negotiation and signing of a cease-fire agreement on behalf of UN contributor nations; insuring South Korean compliance with the armistice; maintaining the armistice as a member of the Military Armistice Commission (MAC); acting as guarantor of South Korean security and deterrent against any future North Korean aggression (within the framework of a UN Greater Sanctions statement and bilateral U.S. security commitment);(8) and finally supervising the expansion and modernization of South Korean armed forces and their integration into a joint U.S.-South Korean military command, the Combined Forces Command (CFC).
The politics attending the end of the war were as traumatic as the beginning and had a lasting impact on the role of the UN Command. Since Syngman Rhee flatly refused to sign the armistice--adamant in his determination to drive the Chinese out of the Korean peninsula--the UN Command was forced to guarantee South Korean compliance to its Communist interlocutors. (Although this initially left South Korea absent from MAC meetings, a South Korean general officer was subsequently made a member of the UNC delegation.) At the same time, in order to ensure compliance through continued U.S. control of South Korean armed forces under the UN Command, the United States agreed to negotiate a bilateral security treaty with South Korea.(9)
Nor was the armistice expected to last as long as it has. Indeed, in its Special Report to the United Nations Security Council in August 1953, the UNC cited the political conference to be convened within three months after the armistice was signed as reason for optimism in resolving the issue that was at the core of the Korean conflict: the longstanding political struggle for Korean unification.(10)
However, as might have been reasonably predicted given the intensity of the fighting itself, the protracted negotiations for an armistice (more than 500 meetings were held), and especially the ideological divide between the Communist and non-Communist world--the conference failed to break the impasse.(11) So deep were the differences between North and South Korea that fifty-three years later, the UN Command is still in business. Nor did Four Party talks also held in Geneva between 1997-1999, including the two other Korean War combatants--the U.S. and China, in addition to the two Koreas--succeed in the more modest goal of replacing the Armistice Agreement with a peace treaty or agreeing on interim confidence-building/tension reduction measures.(12)
Two decades after the Geneva Conference, a UN debate on the future of the UN Command during the 1975 General Assembly session resulted in two conflicting resolutions each providing for the dissolution of the UN Command. The first, sponsored by the communist powers and Algeria, provided for its unconditional dissolution, while a second, sponsored by the U.S. and Japan, provided for alternative armistice arrangements.(13)
However, the debate ended inconclusively with the passage of both resolutions that, in effect, canceled each other out. Although politically significant--for the first time a UN body backed North Korea on the Korean question--it was legally moot since only the Security Council, still seized with the Korean issue on the basis of its earlier resolutions and retaining the lead role under the UN Charter with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace or acts of aggression--could not be overruled by a General Assembly resolution.
The only concrete result was the removal of U.S. forces in Korea from the UN Command umbrella, except for a small contingent of several hundred directly responsible for armistice maintenance activities in the Joint Security Area (JSA) at the truce village of Panmunjom and a support staff in Seoul.(14) This “hollowing out” of the UN Command ultimately led to the creation of the CFC in 1978.
In the postwar period, the UNC has been largely eclipsed by the CFC--combining the military forces and resources of the United States and South Korea and responsible for the defense of South Korea under the 1953 U.S.-South Korean Mutual Security Treaty. That treaty has greatly diluted the concept of collective security and circumscribed the postwar role of the UNC.
Nevertheless, during the intervening years, UN Command representatives to the MAC and General Officers’ talks at Panmunjom have served as an important channel of communication with the communist side, particularly in dealing with numerous incidents and truce violations, most prominently the illegal seizure of the U.S. spy ship Pueblo in international waters off North Korea’s East Coast in 1968 and subsequent negotiations leading to the release of her crew.(15) Today, the UN Command exits only in vestigial form, conducting meetings with the North Korean People’s Army within the framework of General Officer’s talks, successor to the moribund MAC.
The future of the UN Command--the subject of the 1975 General Assembly debate on Korea--as a turning point in terms of American policy, Former Secretary of State Kissinger drafted a key 1974 National Security Council memorandum setting forth conditions that would result in the termination of the Command premised on a successful shift in primary responsibility for peace and security on the peninsula from the United States to the two Koreas.(16) The centerpiece of the policy initiative was a Shanghai-type communique recognizing one Korea and committing the United States to the ultimate withdrawal of its forces from the peninsula.(17)
Further, under Kissinger’s proposal, U.S. and South Korean representatives would accede in their individual capacities to membership on the MAC. Clearly, current efforts at inter-Korean reconciliation are consistent with the thrust of the Kissinger memorandum although it has not yet developed sufficient strength to support it.
Obviously, North Korea has both an interest and some ability to affect the future direction of political change on the Korean peninsula, particularly as it pertains to the UN Command. At present, however, it is in the paradoxical position of demanding the dissolution of the UN Command and the withdrawal of U.S. forces on the one hand, but dependent on the Command’s continued existence on the other for the purpose of negotiating a Korean peace treaty with the United States--its preferred interlocutor.
In effect, the North Korean position ignores the fact that the UNC is a coalition force representing not only the United States, but also the governments of the fourteen other contributing nations and the Republic of Korea, all of which placed forces under its control. Ironically, by dissolving the UN Command, the United States would, at once, prevent Pyongyang from hiding behind the polite fiction that the United States is its primary interlocutor in crafting a new peace regime for the peninsula simply because it controls the UN Command
More generally, negotiating a peace treaty under such circumstances is a political minefield. For starters, the state’s parties to the Korean War have never been formally--let alone legally--identified so that a prospective conference to draft a peace treaty would be an open-ended affair. China sent so-called “People’s Volunteers” while the Soviet Union conducted a secret air war utilizing Russian-Korean pilots. President Harry Truman termed the Korean conflict “a police action under the United Nations” inasmuch as it was based on a UN resolution, not a Congressional declaration of war. Finally, for North and South Korea; it was a civil war that ended in a stalemate--an extension of the pre-war insurgency in the South.
Moreover, since there was no declaration of war by any party at any time during the Korean conflict, international law neither mandates a peace treaty to formally end the conflict, nor would it be politically meaningful unless such a treaty reflected a genuine change of relationships among the governments involved from confrontation to cooperation, particularly, for the United States and North Korea. Historically, although the United States subscribed to that goal at Four Party talks, the goal of the 1954 Geneva conference on Korea was unification not a peace treaty.
Nevertheless, were such a peace conference to be held, it may be assumed that participation by those states represented at Four Party talks--the de facto combatants--would, at a minimum, be required, while others such as Russia and Japan, as neighboring states, directly or indirectly involved in the war, would also have a strong claim as guarantors. It should be noted, however, that while the UN Command, as a coalition force representing sixteen sovereign states, was empowered to sign an armistice, only the representatives of individual states would be empowered to sign a peace treaty.(18)
On the related question of sequence, it has been argued that the termination of the UN Command itself is an indispensable condition for converting existing armistice arrangements into a permanent peace ending the Korean War. This conclusion rests on the assumption that as long as the UN Command is aligned with one Korea e.g. South Korea, the United States cannot play the role of an “honest broker” necessary to create a new security environment.(19) According to Woodrow Wilson scholar Selig Harrison, this would involve the creation of a new U.S.-North Korean Military Commission to parallel the North-South Military Commission created on paper by the 1991 North-South Basic Agreement.(20) The two Commissions would function in tandem as a parallel or integrated peace mechanism (e.g. as a Mutual Security Assurance Commission) guaranteeing peace and security on the peninsula.(21)
However, a more realistic scenario would be to utilize rather than discard the UN Command as a transitional instrumentality both backstopping the process of inter-Korean reconciliation and buttressing the military and security provisions of the Basic Agreement that provides for mutual observation of military exercises, inspections of weapons as well as mutual reductions and redeployment of armed forces. It is unlikely that the process of North-South reconciliation would be able to gain sufficient momentum without such a bridge-building role.
More recently, following the 2000 Pyongyang summit between the leaders of North and South Korea, the UN Command has taken on a new role as a key facilitator of inter-Korean reconciliation by delegating administrative authority to South Korea to carve out areas in the UNC-controlled southern portion of the DMZ for the construction of road and rail links to facilitate economic cooperation as well as family and tourist exchanges between the two Koreas.(22) The successful completion of the de-mining operation by both Koreas, together with last month’s symbolic re-linking of the rail links on the East and West Coast, constitutes a new stage in inter-Korean relations.(23)
To be sure, while these are positive developments, they underscore the fragile foundation on which inter-Korean relations rests. A border sealed for a half-century is slowly swinging open but in no sense does it constitute an open border between states at peace. The cold hard fact is that while the two Koreas may have put war behind them, only the possibility, not the reality, of peace exists on the Korean peninsula today. Given this void, the UNC bridges both a physical and political “no-man’s land,” providing an interim solution in the absence of an effective inter-Korean mechanism for maintaining peace and security.
However, this new role has been mired in controversy from both Koreas. South Koreans have expressed opposition to a gate-keeping role for the UN Command in the context of reconciliation, finding it grating that Americans decide whether South Koreans can go north and North Koreans come south.(24) And although new streamlined procedures for transiting the DMZ have been instituted--making UNC approval a mere formality--given the large numbers of Koreans participating in Mt. Kumgang tours over a recently constructed road through the DMZ and increasing traffic in connection with the construction of the newly inaugurated Kaesong Industrial Park--resentment is still palpable.
Not surprisingly, North Korea has played this dissension to the hilt, viewing it as a golden opportunity to undercut the authority of the UNC within the DMZ by pressing for the transfer of jurisdiction to Seoul and initially refusing to negotiate directly withthe UNC.(25) However, to protect its flank, the UN Command wisely delegated only administrative authority--not actual military control--over corridors one hundred meters wide on either side of the roadbed, but sufficiently wide to provide “rules of the road” on safety and security for the workers there. Nevertheless, it is to be expected that Pyongyang will continue to press the issue of control to its advantage in other sectors of the DMZ with the aim of ultimately reducing the UN Command to a physical
nullity.
A more immediate problem has arisen in connection with the current negotiating impasse over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. The recent U.S. attempt, in conjunction with Britain and France, to move the issue to the Security Council was blocked by China and Russia. It should be recalled that that the creation of the UN Command took place in the absence of the latter--not with their consent--at a time when the former Soviet Union was boycotting the Council in retaliation of the U.S. refusal to recognize the current Chinese government e.g. the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate government of China. Although this is “ancient” diplomatic history in one sense, it also underscores the fact that the Security Council has never achieved unity in terms of its approach to the Korean problem, and is no more unified today than its predecessor was a half-century ago.
Complicating matters still further, the UN no longer views the activities of the UN Command as one of its responsibilities although the Command still continues to file reports as required by the Security Council resolution that created it.(26)
The decision to terminate the UN Command under appropriate conditions--the original rationale of Kissinger's memorandum more than a quarter-century ago--bears directly on the question of multilateral responsibility for the Korean problem. There are several important points to bear in mind.
While the operational basis of the U.S. security commitment was transferred to the bilateral CFC in 1978--thereby limiting the role of the UN Command to maintaining the armistice--the implementation of any of the military provisions of the Basic Agreement would automatically involve the UN Command inasmuch as the provisions of the latter are keyed to the Armistice Agreement itself.
Moreover, ending the Cold War structure on the peninsula, as advocated by former President Kim Dae Jung and repeated by President Roh Moo Hyun, along with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stressing the need for an “international support structure,” in Korea, also touch on the future of the UN Command.(27)
Although the UNC has always stood for collective security--and the central organizing principle of U.S. intervention in the Korean War--the concept appears increasingly outmoded in the post-cold war world, where a peacekeeping/peace-enforcement variant failed conspicuously in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo. The outright rejection of UN Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali's grandiose plans for peacekeeping and peace-enforcement (Agenda for Peace) by the United States and other members of the Security Council powers--fearful of granting the UN too much power in the sensitive area of military operations without adequate oversight--ultimately cost the secretary general his job and makes the likelihood of the UN successfully performing such a role in Korea increasingly remote.(28)
Still the UN Command--with its staying power undiminished--retains its central role as the direct link between the Security Council that remains seized with the Korean question on the basis of three 1950 Security Council resolutions and the need to maintain peace and security on a peninsula increasingly threatened by North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Moreover, as a practical matter, three of the Security Council’s five permanent members (the United States, China, and Russia) have direct security interests in developments on the peninsula and, consequently, would be immediately and directly involved in the event of future hostilities.
Clearly, it would make little sense to dissolve the UN Command prematurely only to be faced with the need for a new UN mandate should future developments imperil the peace. Conversely, what better way to ensure the proper implementation of a new Korean peace regime than through Security Council monitoring oversight by a revitalized and reconstituted UN Command? In any case, to cut Korean security from its UN moorings and eliminate any future role for UN Command contributor nations would also render moot the "Greater Sanctions Statement" issued on the eve of the armistice pledging joint action in the event of renewed hostilities.(29)
During its 1974 session, the General Assembly recommended that, “the Security Council, in due course, should consider the dissolution of the UN Command.” However, rather than dissolve the UN Command, “a sense of the Security Council” resolution building on the General Assembly’s endorsement of the inter-Korean peace process at its 2000 Millennium Summit would likely find broad support within the Council. It would align the UN Command mandate to restore international peace and security with support for the implementation of the tension-reduction and confidence-building provisions of the Basic Agreement (as endorsed by the 2000 North-South Pyongyang summit.) Indeed, the sole remaining rationale for the UN Command--apart from armistice maintenance--is to expedite the implementation of the Basic Agreement, leading to the replacement of the armistice by a peace arrangement, the unfulfilled goal of Four Party talks.
By virtue of the political and military control exercised through the UN Command and CFC, the United States--the only major power to maintain a military presence on the Korean peninsula in the post-cold war world--constitutes the politico-military fulcrum around which the two Koreas have defined their security requirements and strategies in the absence of a modus vivendi between them. This reality is most clearly reflected in continuing North Korean efforts to inject the future status of the UN Command and Korean War Armistice Accords as issues at Four Party talks in Geneva by demanding the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Korea and the negotiation of a peace treaty between the United States and North Korea to replace the Armistice.
And while the landmark December 1991 North-South Basic Agreement between the two Koreas on Nonaggression, Reconciliation, Exchange and Cooperation, along with the June 2000 Pyongyang Summit Declaration, open up the possibility for sweeping changes in the peninsula's security architecture in the years immediately ahead, until these agreements are actually implemented and the armistice converted into a peace regime, the UN Command will remain an indispensable part of the politico-military landscape of the Korean peninsula. It will be time to give the UN Command the “decent burial” it surely deserves only after completing its remaining task.
Notes
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(1) Three carefully crafted resolutions successively noted that “a breach of the peace had occurred, requested the immediate withdrawal of North Korean forces and called on members to render every assistance to the United Nations in the execution of this resolution” (June 25); recommended that Member states “provide such assistance as might be necessary to repel the armed attack and to restore international peace and security in the area;” (June 27) and created “a unified command (the UN Command) to coordinate assistance led by the United States.” (July 7).
(2) Its operative paragraphs recommended that, “all members providing military forces and other assistance pursuant to the aforesaid Security Council resolution make such forces and other assistance available to a unified command under the United States; requests the United States to designate the commander of such forces; authorizes the unified command at its discretion to use the United Nations flag in the course of operations against North Korean forces concurrently with the flags of the various nations participating; requests the United States to provide the Security Council with reports as appropriate on the course of action taken by the unified command.” S/1588:SCOR, V. Resolutions and Decisions, 1950 S/INF/5 Rev. 1), p. 5.
(3) See Peter Lowe, The Korean War
NSC 68 drafted by Paul Nitze, Director of Policy Planning at the State Department anticipated such a buildup in the wake of the challenge posed by “an ideological struggle of global proportions dictating a far greater marshaling of resources than in the past.” See William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History, Princeton; Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 42.
(4) General Order No. 1, CINCFE, Tokyo , Japan July 24, 1950.
(5) July 14, 1950 Rhee Letter to Gen. MacArthur, FRUS, Vol. 1950, Korea.
(6) The list of UN contributor nations included the following: Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Colombia, Ethiopia, France, Great Britain, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Thailand, Turkey, and the United States.
(7) See UN General Assembly “Uniting for Peace” Resolution 376 (v), October 7, 1950 creating a UN Commission for the Unification and Reconstruction of Korea (UNCURK) and granting the UN Command broad new powers in the military occupation and political reunification of Korea. The wording provides authority “for carrying out all constituent acts leading to the creation of a sovereign state of Korea.”
(8) The Greater Sanctions Statement was a deterrent to future aggression, putting the Communist side on notice that “in all probability, renewed hostilities would not be limited to the Korean peninsula.” Under the treaty (Article IV), “the Republic of Korea grants and the U.S. accepted the right to dispose land, air, and sea forces in and about the territory of the Republic of Korea as determined by mutual agreement.” For full text of treaty see Leland Goodrich Korea: A Study of U.S. Policy in the United Nations, Council on Foreign Relations, New York: Greenwood, 1956. Appendix, pp. 234-35.
(9) For a discussion of the negotiation of the security treaty see John Barry Kotch “The Origins of the American Security Commitment to South Korea” in Bruce Cumings (ed.) Child of Conflict, University of Washington Press, 1983. pp. 238-59.
(10) August 24, 1953, Department of State Bulletin. See text The Korean Armistice Agreement, International Treaty Series.
(11) For U.S. position papers and draft proposals for the reunification of Korea prepared for the Geneva Conference, see FRUS 1953-1954. Vol. XVI pp. 131-162; for an analysis of the conference see Robert F. Randle, The Geneva Conference of 1954, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.
(12) The Four Party talks were based on a joint U.S.-South Korean communique issued as a proposal at the Cheju summit between President Kim Young Sam and Bill Clinton, April 6, 1996. It proposed a peace agreement or arrangement and tension reduction/confidence building measures among the Korean War combatants, (the two Koreas, United States, and China).
(13) For a discussion of the debate see John Barry Kotch, The United Nations Command in Historical Perspective; Anatomy and Legacy of a UN Collective Security Enforcement Action, Chapter 6, Postwar Developments and Chapter 7. See also United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) 30th session, 1975, Question of Korea Agenda Item 119 and report of the First Committee (GA/10327), 2049th meeting, November 18, 1975.
(14) Ibid.
(15) P. Wesley Kriebel, “Korea; The Military Armistice Commission, 1965-1970,” Military Affairs, Air War College, Maxwell AFB Alabama, pp. 96-99.
(16) National Security Council Memorandum No. 251, “Termination of the UN Command in Korea,” March 29, 1974.
(17) Ibid.
(18) For a discussion of the legal issues involved in dissolving the UN Command and negotiations for a peace treaty see Choung Il Chee, “Legal Problems Involving the Dissolution of the UN Command in Korea and the Korean Armistice Agreement,” Korea and International Law, International Legal Series Study No. 4., Korea University, Seoul Press, 1993.
(19) “Turning Point in Korea: New Dangers and New Opportunities for the United States,” Report of the Task Force on U.S.-Korean Policy, Selig Harrison, Chairman, sponsored by The Center for International Policy, The Center for East Asian Studies, The University of Chicago, Washington, D.C., pp. 22-23, February 2003 and Korean End Game: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement, Chapter 13, Ending the Korean War, The Century Foundation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
(20) Text of Agreement on Nonaggression, Reconciliation, Exchange and Cooperation, (North-South Basic Agreement) December 12, 1991; White Paper on National Unification, Ministry of National Unification, Republic of Korea. Article 12 states “To implement and guarantee nonaggression, the two sides shall set up a South-North Joint Military Commission within three months of the coming into force of this Agreement. In the said Commission, the two sides shall discuss and carry out steps to build military confidence and realize arms reduction, including the mutual notification and control of major movements of military units and major military exercise, the peaceful utilization of the DMZ, exchanges of military personnel and information, phased reductions in armaments including the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and attack capabilities and verifications thereof.”
(21) Harrison, op cit.
(22) North-South Basic Agreement, op cit.
(23) Donald Kirk, “Koreans Rally Around Train Link,” International Herald Tribune, June 12, 2003.
(24) Editorial, “Delegation of UNC Power,"The Korea Herald, December 3, 2002.
(25) “North Korea, UNC discuss rail project,” The Korea Herald, September 5, 2002; “UNC, North Korea sign agreement on inter-Korean transportation,” September 13, 2002.
(26) UN Secretary General Kofi Annan did not pay a visit on the UN Commander in Korea during his visit to Seoul in 2000 suggesting that for the secretary general, there is no direct relationship between the UN and the UN Command. This was confirmed by a high-level UN Secretariat official.
(27) North-South Basic Agreement, op cit., Article11 states that “the South-North demarcation line and the areas of nonaggression shall be identical with the Military Demarcation Line specified in the Military Armistice Agreement of July 27, 1953 and the areas that have been under the jurisdiction of each side until the present time.”
(28) The Korea Times, September 3, 2000.
(29) United Nations, New York Office of Public Information, 1992.
(30) UN General Assembly resolution, Millennium General Assembly, September 2000.
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