Ban-chusa Is Coming To Town

ㅁAlas! Alack-a-day! Ban-chusa is coming to town
December 22 2006

“Santa Claus is coming to town…. I am making a list…checking a list twice…going to find who’s naughty or nice…Ban-chusa is coming to town.”

Author’s note 1: Ban, Ki-moon, the newly elected Secretary General of the United Nations, has been carrying an appellation, “Ban-chusa”, during the 35-something years of his bureaucratic life in the South Korean Government…the loose translation of “chusa” refers to a low-level mandarin in a duty of an administrative clerk who generally lacks of charisma and is chockfull of uninspiring character that only concerns about one’s tenure as a dull, bland, faceless, inoffensive, unexciting, and run-of –the –mill errand boy. Most typically, the “chusa” plays a role of an official lapdog to bark in behalf of one’s master whenever boss yells “sic’em!”

Author’s note 2: You may find a live video here where Ban-chusa mutters, fumbles, and croons in a foolish and botched manner. Watching the video first and then reading my article later may help considerably in understanding the main pillar of my argument, the duck principle: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck, period. )

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/ifs_news/hi/nb_rm_fs.stm?news=1&nbram=1&nbwm=1&nol_storyid=6181719


“America with other members (of the United Nations)…have been making a great contribution to restore peace and stability…to the Iraqi people. We have a high admiration for all that the United States has been doing…we hope that the Iraqi people will be able to enjoy genuine stability.”

That was the exact words, Ban-chusa told the anchorman Bill Weir during his interview in Good Morning America’s weekend edition in October 15 2006 after he shot to super stardom, the Secretary General, shamelessly telecasting his “chusa-character” to his future master, USA, and butting head with current Secretary General Kofi Annan’s statement that the US invasion of Iraq was illegal and Iraqi people are suffering from the daily onslaughts of civil war brought on by the US military occupation.

Even the stray dogs in the street of New York City where Ban-chusa begins his new UN career in 2007 know well that the US military occupation in Iraq is not “making a great contribution to restore peace and stability” in the region and the Iraqi people are not “admiring highly for all that the US has been doing,” while the incoming Secretary General profusely thanked the American people for exporting democracy and bringing stability to Iraq.

What’s up, Doc?

How in the world do we expect Ban-chusa doing his job of a strong and unbiased arbiter, trouble-shooter, and problem-solver for the delicate and intense international conflicts like the Middle East conflicts, World Food Program, Refugee Programs, Human Rights and Atomic Energy Issues?
How in the world do we hope that Ban-chusa stands up against the big powers in favor of the weak member state, when he kowtowed 90 degree genuflecting on the mat squeaking “halleluiah America”?
Isn’t the job of the Secretary General just too big for a little known “chusa” whose main function is more a milquetoast secretary than an assertive General?

Nothing in his past indicates that Ban-chusa would function as a powerful statesman in a rule-setting international body like the past Secretary Generals Dag Hammarskjold and U Thant… he rather works a backroom boy as he’s been doing all in his public life, serving his masters from the Military dictators to the political hacks.
During the brutal totalitarian regime of despotic General Park CH when most of his friends in the university converged in the street for mass demonstration to gain freedom and democracy and were arrested, tortured, jailed and exiled from the country, he hid cowardly in an attic closing his eyes, plugging his ears, gagging his mouth, and studied hard in 24/7 fashion in order to become a “chusa”.
In other words, from the beginning he has carried a quintessential characteristic of “chusa” class-consciousness that borders on total obsequiousness toward his master.

In his academic years during the sixties, the South Korea was embroidered with massive student demonstrations that a majority of university youngsters poured out into the street day in and day out, demanding the rights of free speech in the campus, petitions of habeas corpus for jailed students, and the abolition of military dictatorship.
In response, General Park CH released a coterie of hundreds of goon squads armed with iron pipes and baseball bats against the demonstrating students, beating and cracking the skulls and bodies of unarmed youngsters, arresting en masse and corralling them in temporary holding pens and administering the torture of water boarding to the student leaders.
The prisons were flooded with students, professors, labor leaders, and ordinary people who valiantly protested against his tyranny and hundreds of detainees were met with various forms of tortures and long-term jail sentences that resulted in suspicious deaths of dozens of innocent people and in the judicial killings of dissident groups.

In this social ambience, Ban-chusa was warming up his ass glued on a chair, studied hard fueled by his desire becoming a “chusa” and then passed successfully for the state exam ignoring the desperate cries from his fellow students…and then he has cut his teeth on 35-something years of his public service as a kowtowing yes man toward the iron-fisted, torture-maniac, and tin-pot military dictators (Gen. Park, Chun and Roh), an enchilada of a corrupt political hack (YS Kim), an opportunistic and venal comprador (DJ Kim), and a plastic and tubby bullfrog (Roh MH).
In other words, he, like the all-season tire, appeared to be talented with accommodating the various wishes of any type of bosses, a perfect character of a loyal, bootlicking, insipid, spineless, and weathervane milquetoast “chusa” and he had a gall cum nicety to say sorry sheepishly to his “senior-chusas” when he was awarded unceremoniously with getting promoted ahead of them.

Contrary to his admirer’s accolades that he was fastidious and laborious in implementing rules and regulations with fine details, he once goofed up the international treaty with Russia and was booted out from his ambassadorship until the foreign minister of the South Korea ratcheted him up from the street for his excellent (?) skill in English and French language…that is, his execrable English skill is obviously good enough in Korean standard among the diplomatic bureaucrats at the Foreign Ministry where scores of malapropistic “chusas” huddle picking some lunch leftovers between their teeth with a wooden toothpick in the corridors of cafeteria.
As “Ban-chusa” himself admitted frequently that he learns English by rote as most of Koreans do, he, in the live interview, often mumbles or mutters in English with no intonation like a parrot and spews out a series of monotonous vocabularies like a robot with his squinty eyeballs desperately rolling to search the memorized words or phrases he prepared in his rehearsals for press conference.

There is also a disturbing press report that he might be a member of the Unification Church because he quoted himself a “non-denominational Christian”…it is possible he might briefly be joined with the Moonies during his school years, because it was a heyday for the Moonies to recruit and brainwash the Korean youngsters, considering Ban-chusa was somewhat a loner, a wonk, and a farm boy with little money away from his hometown…a desirable target for Moonies.
It also bodes evil if it were proven that he was a Moonies, because the notorious Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) at the time employed Moonies their agents in Korea for the domestic surveillance against the dissident group, in Japan for the covert operation to disrupt anti-government movement, and in US for a major conduit to distribute the hush money toward Korean resident sleepers who lobbied for the dictatorial South Korean military government.

In the academic sense of moral and political standard, the qualities of “Ban-chusa” squarely remain in the lowest rung of promotional ladder in the bureaucratic system.

Strangely, for Bonkers Bolton, the boneheaded US envoy to the UN, “Ban-chusa” became first an accidental, second a sought-after and then a god-send candidate for the UN Secretary General in his pursuit of reforming the UN organizations palatable to the US foreign policies of imperial expansionism…Bonkers Bolton has long dismissed the legitimacy of the UN, quipping that “If the US secretary building in New York lost ten stories, it would not make a bit of difference”, and he needs someone a “chusa”-class bureaucrat who loyally follows the orders of the superpower nation unlike Mr. Kofi Annan who frequently irks the US interests in the international arena.

In other words, Bonkers Bolton wanted to make the UN an unworkable organization only as good one as it dances according to the tune of US foreign engagements and “Ban-chusa” provides the choreograph for the tune accordingly.
And “Ban-chusa” appears to be carrying all the ingredients to a fault in his bureaucratic genes executing the US intention to make the world organization a spineless, wobbling, and “impossible” institute.

Luckily for the time being, “Ban-chusa” was spared from the barking orders by the abrasive, infantile, and boorish Bonkers Bolton when the US envoy failed to get the confirmation from the US Senate and was forced to resign, as “Ban-chusa” was about to move in to take the seat in the UN building
However, Ban-chusa’s honeymoon in town won’t last much long, since Uncle Sam would breathe down on his neck closely so as not to let him stray too far away from the peg that the South Koreans were tethered in the puppet/puppeteer relationship with the US occupation forces for over half a century.

For 35 something years, “Ban-chusa” has been sitting by the same peg so long that he might have no sensation of a leash around his neck, playing antics comically about 007 James Bond and singing boyishly a Christmas carol “Santa Claus is coming to town” at the press conference as the video shows.
He alluded to the similarity between Ban and Bond, and replaced lyrics with “Ban Ki-moon is coming to town” as if he were a Santa bringing gifts to the international community.

Some say “Ban-chusa” deserves to be seen as well a good administrator of the world organization as he claimed a harmonizer and bridge-builder among member nations…
But how on earth could world people have an image of “Ban-chusa” a man of integrity when he is as blind as an owl in daylight, shouting that “We thank America for all that they have been doing in Iraq”? He doesn’t follow the daily news of bombings, killings, and massacres that Americans have brought down to the streets, towns, and homes of Iraqi civilians?

Then, obviously, as the saying goes that “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck”, there are only two possibilities: “Ban-chusa” must be either an idiot when he says totally opposite images of catastrophes in Iraq that even the stray dogs in the street can attest easily his falsification. Or he is a liar wearing the pairs of USA-made goggles that show always Alice-in-Wonderland of incomplete projects and wishful thinking for freedom and democracy in the Islamic country of Iraq.

In either way, there is no attic to hide in his new playing field at the UN building as if he hid cowardly playing a game of peek-a-boo during his school years.
History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes,
Sadly, my bet is that “Ban-chusa” would be monikered more of a pipsqueak Secretariat who almost always kowtows to his master as he has done for three-decade-long career than an assertive General who stands up in his bully pulpit and barks back against the growling Superman, Uncle Sam, since “Ban-chusa” has neither intellectual mettle and temerity nor moral fiber and commitment to deal with the worldwide conflicts.