Ban Ki-moon Cannot Serve Two Masters UN Elects Korea's Ban Ki-moon as Secretary-General Ban Takes Oath as UN Secretary-General Ban Passes Chirac's French Test Ban Wants Seoul to Be More Proactive on N.Korea Rights Ban Ki-moon Reports for Tough Duty at UN New UN Chief Begins Five-Year Term Ban Gets Early Start on UN Reform

What he is today is partly due to his excellent language skills. When Ki-moon was a middle school student, his English teacher told students to write what they had learned on the day out 10 times. Ban faithfully followed and that way memorized whole English sentences. He was even able to make English educational materials for his classmates when he was a high school freshman. A chance to improve his English further came thanks to the Chungju fertilizer factory. Some 20 American engineers and their family members were living nearby. “The wives of the American engineers took turns and taught people to speak English, and Ban Ki-moon from Chungju High School was the top. He memorized whatever was written in English like a madman.” (Ban’s senior in Chungju, Ahn Young-soo, now a Kyung Hee University professor.) When he was a high school junior, Ban was chosen to participate in the VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) program. In all, four students were selected from Korea and when Ban made it, “the whole city was overjoyed.” (Ban’s brother Ban Ki-sang). When the time came for him to visit the U.S. for a month in the summer of his high school senior year, students at Chungju Girls High School delivered the lucky bags they made as gift for Americans to Ban.

Yoo Soon-taek, who was the school’s student council president, represented her school -- and got married to Ban in 1971, a year after he passed the national diplomat’s exam. Their union began in a humble W100,000 (US$1=W949) single room in Seoul. On his trip to the U.S., Ban and the other foreign students met president John F. Kennedy in Washington. Ban has often looked at his picture with the president during his rise from a career diplomat to foreign minister and, probably, UN secretary-general.

Ban Ki-moon and students from other countries meet with then U.S. president John F. Kennedy at the White House during Ban’s second year at Chungju High School, when he was chosen to participate in the VISTA program run by the Red Cross.

Career decisions

After his family became financially strapped, Ban had to work his way through school and received his bachelor’s degree in international relations from Seoul National University. He passed the national diplomat’s exam second after later foreign minister Choi Sung-hong. At the time, Ban told his family, “I’ve always been top; this is the first time in my life that I’ve slid to second place.” He was no. 1 again among new diplomats waiting for their first assignment after arduous training, when he got an assignment to the Korean Embassy in the U.S. But instead, he volunteered to work in India. “Ki-moon volunteered to work in India to offer financial support to our family,” his brother Ki-sang recalls. “He thought that if he worked in the U.S., he wouldn’t be able to save money.”

Working in India, Ban met Lho Shin-young, then-consul general of the Korean Consulate General in New Delhi, later Korean prime minister, who was to have a great influence on Ban’s life as a diplomat. Lho had been sent to India to help Korea establish bilateral ties, and noticed that Ban, thought still new to his job, had superb English skills, agility, good judgment and diligence.

After becoming the Korean Ambassador to India after the two nations established diplomatic ties in 1973, Lho publicly praised Ban in a meeting. In his memoirs, Roh recalled his days in India and wrote, “Ban Ki-moon, who would help me and do many things (in India), was still newly married the first time I met him.” Lho soon became head of what was then the Agency for National Security Planning and the nation’s prime minister, and he appointed Ban as senior protocol secretary to the prime minister. That was the start of what seemed Ban’s unstoppable rise through the ranks. Ban, ever humble, took a week writing to some 100 of his colleagues, seniors and juniors both, to say sorry for getting promoted so quickly.

The ABM incident

During the Kim Young-sam administration, Ban was assistant vice minister at the Foreign Ministry and in 1996 became national security advisor to the president. But when the Kim Dae-jung administration took over, it seemed that his luck had run out. It was not until 2000 that he was named vice minister from Korean ambassador to Austria. Lee Joung-binn, the president of the Korea Foundation, who was appointed minister at around the same time, told reporters then, “I’m really lucky to have Ban Ki-moon as my vice minister. Now all I have to do is just be the minister.” But the low point in Ban’s 31 years in diplomacy finally came in 2001.

In February that year, the working-level team mistakenly left a clause in the written agreement from a Korea-Russia summit that called for the strengthening and preservation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty the Bush Administration wanted abolished. There were major waves in Korea-U.S. relations. After wrapping up a summit in Washington in March, 2001, president Kim Dae-jung said, “Nobody will ever know how much I had to apologize to the U.S. for this mistake.” Lee Joung-binn and Ban Ki-moon were kicked out. After his less than honorable discharge, Ban said, “I want to die. I’ve never even spent just one hour for myself,” and withdrew from public life.

Since Ban was unemployed, Prof. Ahn Young-soo of Kyung Hee University bought him a subway pass and told him that now there was going to be no one to drive him around.

A triumphant return

But just four months later, then foreign minister Han Seung-soo retrieved Ban from obscurity. When Han became the president of the UN General Assembly, he appointed Ban as chef-de-cabinet to the president of the General Assembly and Korean ambassador to the UN. That position was to prove a big help in his ascendancy to the top spot at the UN.

(englishnews@chosun.com )