Women ask UN to seek Korean peace treaty

More than 130 female activists from 38 countries pressed the leader of the United Nations on Tuesday to fulfill a goal he declared after assuming the job a decade ago: a permanent peace treaty to end the Korean War.

In an open letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, a former foreign minister of South Korea whose tenure will expire at the end of the year, the women implored him to “lead the process of bringing formal closure to the longest-standing war before you leave your post at the United Nations.”

The letter was co-sponsored by Women Cross DMZ, a group that organized a peaceful walk last year across the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, a prominent antiwar group more than 100 years old.

Ban, rumored to be contemplating a run to be president of South Korea after he leaves the United Nations, has often expressed a wish to reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Those tensions have escalated under Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, who has conducted missile and nuclear weapons tests in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions that have left the country deeply isolated.

Despite hopes Ban, 72, might visit North Korea before he leaves the United Nations, he said recently such a trip was highly unlikely.

Ban, born during the Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula, was 9 years old when an armistice halted the Korean War in 1953.

The armistice, not a formal peace treaty, has left the war’s principal antagonists in a technical state of war for 63 years.

“This war must end,” the women’s letter to Ban stated.

It reminded him of a pledge he made in a 2007 speech: “Beyond a peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue with North Korea, we should aim to establish a peace mechanism through transition from armistice to a permanent peace treaty.”