Brown and White Vol. 132 no. 20

              The Brown and White Vol. 132 No. 20
Tuesday, April 25, 2017 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
South Korean UN ambassador talks North Korea
Maxim Beard/B&W Staff
Choong-hee Hahn, the South Korean ambassador to the UN, addresses his audience April 18 in
STEPS 101. Hahn presented on the rising tension in the Korean peninsula.
By MATT COSSEL
B&W Staff
Amid growing tensions between
the United States and North
Korea, Choong-hee Hahn, the
South Korean ambassador to
the United Nations, addressed
the Lehigh community April 18
in STEPS. When sharing his
thoughts about South Korea’s
northern neighbors, Hahn did not
hold back.
“North Korea is trying to lie and
cheat the United States and the
international community,” Hahn
said.
Hahn said since a joint statement
between the United States and
North Korea in 1993, there have
been five different agreements
between the two nations. On cer-tain
occasions, other nations have
had to become involved regarding
North Korea’s nuclear program.
Every time, Hahn said, North
Korea has ignored the statements
and acted in its own interest.
This kind of defection is a com-mon
tactic for the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea. Hahn
said North Korea’s practice of
participating in talks simply to
ask for compensation and then
turning its back on the agree-ments
afterward has become the
norm.
“They have cheated many,
many times,” Hahn said. “Enough
is enough.”
Hahn said the continuation of
strong sanctions from the United
Nations is vitally important to
keep North Korea in line, calling
it “the only justifiable way” to
inflict pressure on North Korea
with the hope it can change its
course. The sanctions placed on
North Korea last year were the
harshest in United Nations’ his-tory.
Hahn said he is critical of North
Korea’s reliance on military
technologies. He said the coun-try
focuses too much on military
capabilities and not enough on its
own people.
He said he also criticized North
Korea’s use of false aggression
from the United States to give
its people a sense of urgency and
nationalism that is then used to
consolidate power within the cen-tral
government.
“There is no hostile policy of
the United States toward North
Korea,” Hahn said.
Hahn said the aggression fab-ricated
by the North Korean gov-ernment
is not reciprocated in
the United States, and there is
no reason for the United States to
use a preemptive strike.
“North Korea has no reason
to attack the United States,”
Hahn said. “It would be a suicidal
strike.”
Hahn said unified Korean voic-es
and increased international
cooperation would be necessary to
address the divide between North
and South Korea. He said the
majority of people living in the
Student-led town hall to address safe drinking
Q&A: Choong-hee
Hahn
By MATT COSSEL
B&W Staff
Following his presentation, The
Brown and White sat down with
ambassador Choong-hee Hahn to talk
about Lehigh, the United Nations
sanctions and international negoti-ations.
Q: How do you like Lehigh so
far?
Choong-hee Hahn: Pennsylvania
was my first destination and arrival
point back in the ’80s when I joined
the University of Pennsylvania to
study, so Pennsylvania is something
special for me. It’s very peaceful and
also the first founding state of the
new migrants in the United States,
and I always feel very comfortable
here. It’s very much like my home-town,
but at the same time, it’s very
inspiring for me because of its histor-ical
importance to the United States.
It’s something very special to me.
Q: You mentioned in your
presentation the many dif-ferent
negotiations that have
taken place among the nations
involved in the conflict on the
Korean peninsula. Recently, the
foreign minister of China, Wang
Yi, said China wanted to re-open
By CATHERINE MANTHORP
Associate Sports Editor
Four.
Four is the number of Lehigh
students who have had “close
calls” in the last few months.
These students suffered serious
injuries and hospitalization due
to alcohol abuse, according to an
email President John Simon sent
to the Lehigh community earlier
this month.
Simon’s email detailed precau-tionary
measures Lehigh would
be taking to ensure there would
be no more alcohol-related “close
calls” on campus. The email said
Lehigh would be increasing its
police presence on and off campus
and would be applying its policies
to enforce alcohol laws.
On April 10, Student Senate
reacted to Simon’s email by send-ing
one of its own to the Lehigh
community. The email presented
a call to action for students to
come together tomorrow at 4:10
p.m. in Perella Auditorium to dis-cuss
safety concerns and steps
students, both as individuals and
as a community, can take to foster
a safer environment for all.
Dakota DiMattio, ’17, the pres-ident
of Student Senate, said the
immediate response from students
after receiving Simon’s email was
confusion. She said a lot of stu-dents
didn’t see a problem with
things like the recent “close calls,”
which scared student leaders the
most.
DiMattio said lives were on the
line and these incidents could
have turned into student deaths.
“That’s never really happened
while we were at Lehigh, so we
felt a personal responsibility to
respond in some way,” DiMattio
said.
She said prior to Senate’s cam-pus-
wide email, Senate sent out
a preliminary email to all organi-zations
registered on the Lehigh
Involvement Connection website
asking for their support.
“We identified it as a student
problem,” DiMattio said. “We
thought it was important to
engage everyone in this conver-sation.”
Matt Rothberg, the Student
Senate treasurer and incoming
president, said the student lead-ers
who responded to Senate’s
preliminary email were in support
of the email addressing campus
safety concerns. Rothberg said he
was happy with how many people
responded.
“The ones that really care were
the ones that were on that email,”
he said.
Caroline Jennings, the presi-dent
of Dance Marathon, said her
organization supports Student
Senate in its efforts to make
Lehigh a safer campus, especially
after recent incidents. She said
Dance Marathon looks forward to
campus cooperation and the town
hall discussion to implement a
safer campus climate.
DiMattio said prior to writ-ing
the email, she met with the
Panhellenic and Interfraternity
See HAHN Page 3 See Q&A Page 3
See TOWN HALL Page 4
Anna Simoneau/B&W Staff