Not to forget that in the current North Korean missile crisis, the Tongsun Park case has played at least a modest part. Recall that from 2003 until July, 2005, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan employed as his personal envoy to the Korean peninsula a Canadian businessman, Maurice Strong.

Strong, by his own admission (see post below) had for years maintained a relationship with Park, and stated last year that among other things, Tongsun Park “has advised me on North Korean issues in my role as U.N. envoy.”

Strong, who enjoyed the rank of U.N. Under-Secretary-General, stepped aside from his U.N. post last year when he was identified as the mysterious “high-ranking U.N. official #2” mentioned—though not accused of any wrongdoing — in a federal indictment last April that named, among others, Tongsun Park. It then emerged in the Sept. 7, 2005 Volcker report on Oil-for-Food that Strong, while serving in an earlier incarnation as the chief architect of Annan’s 1997 U.N. reforms, had accepted a bank check for $988,885, made out to him as “Mr. M Strong,” given to him by Tongsun Park, and allegedly bankrolled by Saddam Hussein.

Strong when confronted with this said first that he did not remember the check, then remembered it but said he did not know the source of the funds, then explained that Park had merely wished to invest a million bucks or so in a Strong family company, which, as it happened, soon after went bankrupt.

Strong has denied any wrongdoing. Park has pleaded “not guilty” to the federal charge of acting as an agent of Saddam. But assuming that all are innocent, there’s still a case to be made that the rest of us are all better off. With that kind of memory, insight and judgment, maybe it’s just as well Maurice Strong is not right now Kofi Annan’s official inside man for the Korean peninsula.