CDKW00639 - Korean Atrocities

In this statement prepared by the Canadian delegation in November 1953, the Canadian diplomatic approach to the Korean conflict and the new Cold War environment was laid out in detail. Within this report, Canada portrayed an image of itself as a peacekeeping nation, with the Chairman of the Canadian delegation stating, “My country hates war and we deplore the necessity of making war. We participated in the Korean war only in fulfilment of our obligations to the United Nations and because of our conviction that the people of all nations can enjoy freedom only when aggressive nations are checked.” Crucially, this draft text is of interest because its third paragraph acknowledges that the Korean conflict was a modern war, and much of its human costs were civilian as a result. This portion on civilian warfare was cut by External Affairs, who argued that emphasizing civilian costs of the United Nations’ war effort would bolster communist propaganda. This tension between the rising acknowledgement of human rights and the trauma of warfare through the United Nations’ founding principles and the intrastate concerns of the Cold War brought an interesting tension to Canada’s foreign policy views, where Ottawa argued for a more peaceful world but also was selectively opaque about the actions undertaken towards that end.