Having now completed half of his term as United Nations (UN) secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon is taking a heavy beating from some Western media outlets. The nastiest example was a June 23 contribution by Jacob Heilbrunn to the online edition of “Foreign Policy,” a U.S. foreign affairs bimonthly, under the title “Nowhere Man: Why Ban Ki-moon is the world’s most dangerous Korean.”

In this piece, Heilbrunn suggests although the secretary-generalship is a highly important position one determining the fate of the world, Ban is the most dangerous Korean in the world because he is not properly fulfilling this role. Most of all, the writer criticizes Ban’s lack of leadership. He says that Ban has not dealt properly with any of the major issues facing the world today, including climate change, international terrorism, the financial crisis, nuclear proliferation, the reconstruction of Afghanistan, the civil war in Sri Lanka and the situations in the Sudan and the Middle East.

In addition, Heilbrunn writes that Ban lacks the makings of a world leader in view of his lackluster speeches, poor English speaking ability, ingrained bureaucratic habits, poor charisma and moral persuasiveness. In an even more jaw-dropping passage, he puts down Ban by saying he has left no mark other than performing “his role as a subsidiary of South Korea, Inc.--lining his office walls with Samsung televisions and hiring his South Korean buddies as senior advisors.”　

This kind of thing really goes beyond distortion and is closer to blind cruelty. Ban is the one who made climate change a major item on the UN’s agenda by holding a climate change summit as soon as he took office. It was also Ban who spoke passionately for poorer countries while attending G20 summits in Washington and London. Moreover, there were limits to his ability to move actively on the issue of international terrorism, an area the U.S. is taking the lead in tackling.

Also, can only people who speak English well become a secretary-general of the UN? This is the arrogance and prejudice of an English supremacist view. And, to say that he lacks the moral persuasiveness of Kofi Annan is laughable. There is probably no moral message stronger than the anguished human face Ban has shown at the scenes of grisly tragedies taking place in Gaza, Sichuan, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. It is unbelievable that Heilbrunn would brand Ban, someone who has refused to become an imperial type and who has instead sought ways to quietly reform the UN from below, as a failed UN secretary-general.

As for the purchase of Samsung TVs, apparently the reality of the official residence of the UN Secretary-General is that it is not a place where the Secretary-General himself can renovate it however he sees fit. Moreover, among the senior officials at the UN Secretariat in New York, the only South Korean is Ambassador Kim Won-soo, Deputy Chef de Cabinet. In fact, considering the scale of South Korea’s UN dues, South Koreans actually suffer reverse discrimination. Heilbrunn’s charges of a Korean monopoly are truly ridiculous.

Why is Heilbrunn targeting Secretary-General Ban? It is difficult to think of any reason, besides the fact that Heilbrunn is a well-known Jewish neoconservative. During the situation in Gaza last January, Ban was the first foreign leader to visit the scene. While denouncing Israel’s barbaric actions and expressing the position that those responsible needed to be found and punished legally, he requested an immediate unilateral cease-fire from the Israeli government. The world, and Arabs in particular, sent an unprecedented message of praise to the Secretary-General. Ban also visited the U.S. Congress in March and criticized the nation as a “deadbeat donor,” for not having submitted its 1 billion dollars in UN dues. This kind of behavior would be enough to generate objections from a neoconservative like Heilbrunn who regards the benefits of Israel as paramount and argues that the UN is useless.

This must not shake us. The people should be unstinting in their support and encouragement for Secretary-General Ban, who is working to speak for those without power and without voices to stand on their side in creating a better world.

The views presented in this column are the writer‘s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Hankyoreh.