US embassy cable - 05PARIS8247

UNCLAS PARIS 008247 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FROM USMISSION UNESCO PARIS 
STATE ALSO FOR NATIONAL PARK SERVICE - S MORRIS 
 
E.O. 12958:     N/A 
TAGS: SENV, SCUL, MARR, CJAN, CH, KS, UNESCO 
SUBJECT:  USUNESCO: KOREAN DMZ: NO MECHANISM EXISTS TO 
APPLY FOR WORLD HERITAGE STATUS 
 
 
1.  The 17 November public suggestion of Ted Turner of 
the United Foundations Foundation at a New York City 
event to designate the Korean DMZ as a World Heritage 
Site was unworkable, South Korean UNESCO rep Ki-Joung 
Cho told poloff in a 1 Dec office call, even though a 
great majority of South Koreans probably favor the 
designation of the DMZ as a World Heritage site.  A 
joint submission of the North and South Korean 
Governments to the World Heritage Committee would be 
required, he noted.  This was just not possible, as 
South Korea has no relations with the North Korean 
government, Cho concluded.  He added that chief UNESCO 
culture official Mounir Bouchenaki had gone over the 
same ground earlier in the week with South Korean 
Deputy Permanent Delegate Jong-il Kim.  (Note.  There 
are many cross-boundary World Heritage Sites among the 
812 World Heritage Sites, such as the Belovzhskaya 
Puscha/Bialowieza Forest, on the border between Belarus 
and Poland, in which all involved governments 
cooperated in the application process.  See 
http://whc.unesco.org/en/home/ for more information 
about the World Heritage Convention.  End note.) 
 
2.  Cho extolled the DMZ's natural beauty, noting that 
he had performed his military service near the DMZ.  He 
speculated that perhaps a Korean-American lobbying 
group had approached Ted Turner following the October 
2005 election of the United States to the World 
Heritage Committee.  (Note.  Both the USG and South 
Korea serve on the 21-nation World Heritage Committee, 
which decides policy questions arising under the 1972 
World Heritage Convention, including the designation of 
additional sites. End note.) He also wondered if the 
continuing military activities around the DMZ would be 
consistent with World Heritage site status. 
 
3.  Ambassador Oliver subsequently discussed the same 
topic with Francesco Bandarin, the Director of the 
World Heritage Center at UNESCO.  Bandarin said that 
the idea had been discussed for several years and had 
originally been proposed by a group of Americans.  He 
also said that when he met with Ted Turner recently in 
New York, Turner was quite enthusiastic about the idea. 
But, like the Korean delegate, Bandarin was pessimistic 
about this coming to pass because of a lack of 
cooperation from the DPRK.  He said that cooperation is 
so bad that the DPRK's one World Heritage site - the 
tombs of the Koguryo kingdom -- that straddles the DPRK- 
Chinese border is actually two separate sites rather 
than a cross-boundary site. 
 
Oliver