By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
North Korea, as a member of the United Nations, is obliged to allow South Korean investigators to visit a resort town at Mount Geumgang in North Korea where a South Korean tourist was killed Friday by a North Korean soldier, international law experts said.
The North's decision to ban the entry of a South Korean fact-finding team is an act against the U.N. Charter and the Inter-Korean Basic Agreement signed in 1991, they said.
Following the shooting, the North has cut all communication channels with Seoul in a retaliatory gesture for President Lee Myung-bak's tougher stance toward the Stalinist country and prohibited S. Korean investigators from visiting the shooting scene.
``North Korea is responsible for fully cooperating with South Korea when an incident involving the two states takes place. This is stipulated in the U.N. Charter and the Inter-Korean Basic Agreement,'' Choi Seung-hwan, an international law expert and professor at Kyung Hee University's college of law, told The Korea Times.
According to the U.N. Charter's article 33, parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, should seek a solution by negotiation or other peaceful means of their own choice.
Kim Young-seok, an international law professor at Ewha Womans University, said ``the Inter-Korean Agreement also stipulates when a dispute involving the two Koreas occurs, an inquiry commission comprised of investigators from the two Koreas and members from an independent international organization such as U.N. is supposed to be launched.''
Jae Seong-ho, a law professor at Chung-Ang University, also said the S. Korean authorities has the right to organize a fact-finding team in accordance with the agreement.
Choi advised the Korea to utilize the Chinese government as a mediator to resume talks regarding the killing with the North.
``Given China is the closest ally with the North, if the Chinese government asks the North to open its border to South Korean investigators and to restore its communication channels with Seoul, it should be very difficult for Pyongyang to disregard the requests,'' the professor said.
He said it could be added to the list of the agenda of the U.N. Security Council, which holds an authority to employ forcible measures, at the request of South Korean government or U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon. But it would provoke the North Korean regime and worsen inter-Korean relations rather than help address the problem, the professor said.
pss@koreatimes.co.kr
