How did North Korea end up as president of the UN Conference on Disarmament?

Every once in a while, North Korea they make headlines for their alleged ballistic missile tests, their way of warning the world that they are to be feared. That is why it is ironic that the country of Kim Jong Un occupies, from today, the presidency of the Conference on Disarmament of the UN.

It seems to be a bad joke, but it is not. According to EFE, the “presidency falls each month to one of its 67 member states according to a list in alphabetical order”.

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Now it’s your turn North Koreaa country thatpromises to expand its nuclear weapons capability” and that, since the beginning of the year, has done “more than a dozen weapons tests and, in March, it fired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time since 2017″.

The last releases were at the end of May: three were shipped in “direction to the sea Japan”, “After the completion of the trip to South Korea and Japan of US President Joe Biden”.

About, Marco Carrasco, professor of East Asian Studies at the Faculty of Law and Political Science of the U. de San Marcosopines: “Therein lies the contradiction: that the country that represents the antithesis of disarmament, the one that historically maintains its need to have weapons to protect itself from the rest of the world, should occupy that position”.

“Because we must remember the strategic use, in addition to the military, that North Korea gives to nuclear weapons tests. They do it to dissuade their enemies, to have some bargaining power with other countries, such as South Korea Y USAand, from it, obtain certain benefits”.

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Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea. AP

A boycott ruled out

But Carrasco does not consider that the internal structures and procedures of the United Nations they must change. For her disarmament conference It has been working for decades with the rotation system, so the rules are already given, so it should not cause any inconvenience.

This does not mean, of course, that everyone agrees and does not do something about it. It is undeniable that the North Korean presidency has gone downhill. The EFE agency adds:

“One of the options that had been considered was to boycott the work sessions this month, but the countries finally opted for participation, which in the case of the Europeans will be of a lower level until North Korea ends its term on June 24which means that your ambassadors will not attend the sessions”.

However, according to Carrasco, . “This has happened before. In 2018 she touched Syria occupy this position, and in 2019, to Venezuela”.

“In the Venezuelan case, for example, the United States boycotted the development of these meetings by withdrawing and continuing to criticize. And there were countries that supported him and did the same”.

“For now, that has not happened with North Korea. The US position is quite marked by the nature of the Government of Kim Jong Un, but the other countries did not accompany him. Although the situation could change”.

And, Carrasco says, there is an additional detail that can strain relations within the forum.

, explained what his arms policy responds to. “My country is still at war with USAin other words the Korean war in the fifties has not ended and we are in a state of ceasefire. In addition, we have been subjected to all kinds of threats by the United States, including the use of nuclear weapons.“, held.

Carrasco sentences that, by occupying the presidency, these statements can cause controversy. “You don’t have to mix things up. They demand that their representativeness and opinion be respected. And although his speech is not different from the usual, he has more echo for the leadership, a position that forces him to respect the other positions, at least until the end of his term.”.

Source: Elcomercio