A conversation with the UN Secretary General.

• Author: Plate, Tom
• Position: Worldview - Ban Ki-moon - Interview

IN A SERIES of two-hour sessions over the past two years at his official New York residence, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former South Korean foreign minister, shared insights with me about his position and the UN. He now is in his second term as UN chief.

There is no other job like secretary general of the United Nations. It practically defines the word unique. The position offers the incumbent global star status but, at the same time, comes with an often-hostile bureaucracy, almost 200 bosses (UN member states), a Western media attached like crack junkies to the microwave of instant results, and a backlog of problems almost as long and snarled as history itself, including serial international gang wars deeply embedded in national DNAs.

We are on the second floor of his residence in a Manhattan townhouse on 57th Street, right by the East River. Ki-moon shifts his weight in the chair and stares at me for a few seconds with a wan smile: "Many people have been asking me if I am enjoying my job. My answer is that this is not about whether I enjoy it or not. This is a job that requires a sense of mission. Many people had cautioned me that this was going to be the most impossible job. I realize now, after having served, that this really is the most impossible job--and jokingly I told my member states and my friends that my mission would be to make this impossible job a mission possible [and] that's what I'm doing--whether I'm sane or insane....

"I have always put public service first, then second comes my personal or private life, because [to do this job properly] I have to almost neglect my personal family life here.... During all my 40-plus years as a diplomat, I had been living with a strong sense of public service, and so sometimes, in a sense, my personal life, by the standard of some Westerners, might have been considered miserable.... I'm deeply grateful to my wife, who has never complained."

Ki-moon explains his policy of never letting phone calls pile up: "For example, somebody telephones me, I do not make somebody wait, even while having breakfast or lunch. I always try to take the call, the moment it comes in."

"In the middle of the night?"

"Sure ... because of the time difference with Africa or Europe ... I am used to having to make a telephone call at 2 or 4 or 5 a.m."

"You take these calls in your bedroom? Oh, [your wife] must love that."

"... I can go to my study.... I'm open all 24 hours. When somebody wants to talk to me, I...