Following on from my last post, I began at the UN Memorial Cemetery in Busan. The sun made a magnificent return today that made waiting to visit well worth it. The cemetery honours the approximately 40,000 UN soldiers who perished in the Korean War and the twenty-two countries that supported South Korea by sending personnel. Though this pales in comparison to Korean and Chinese losses, the cemetery’s prominence reflects the significant moral support — and material in the US case — provided by UN participation. That such a broad coalition of nations would agree to risk their people’s lives in defence of a distant country is a remarkable quirk of history that has never been repeated. This was only possible because the Soviets were boycotting the UN at the time over its decision to recognise the ROC (Taiwan) as China’s legitimate government. It was a mistake that they would quickly learn from, brandishing their notorious Security Council veto ever since to preclude effective action.
The UN is now an impotent and morally bankrupt institution that encompasses too many self-interested parties to ever reach consensus. However, it is worth pausing here to appreciate that for a brief moment twenty-two nations coalesced around a determination to extricate the world from the scourge of war. The folly of heady post-war optimism perhaps, but a noble aspiration whose significance is laid bare across thirty-five acres in south central Busan.
