United Nations Security Council Resolution 82 - Aftermath

Aftermath

The resolution was seen as a political victory for the United States, as it identified North Korea as the aggressor in the conflict. Earlier in the day, independent of the UN resolution, Truman had ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to contact US Army General of the Army Douglas Macarthur, who was in charge of US forces in the Far East. He ordered MacArthur to prepare ships for the evacuation of US citizens from Korea, and authorized him to send ammunition and supplies to Pusan to support South Korean forces in the Seoul-Kimpo area. These would be escorted by US military units. He instructed MacArthur to send a survey team into the country to assess the situation and determine how to aid South Korea. Truman also ordered the mobilization of the US Navy for movement into the region.

The US delegation later contacted the Soviet delegation and sent a message requesting that the Kremlin use its influence over North Korea to compel it to comply with the resolution, but the Soviet Union denied the request. With the ineffectiveness of the resolution in de-escalating the conflict, the UNSC convened on June 27 to discuss further actions to take, resulting in United Nations Security Council Resolution 83, which recommended military intervention by other UN member nations to restore peace in Korea. Within days, ships and aircraft from several nations, as well as the first major formations of US troops, were moving to South Korea, setting the stage for a full-scale conflict.

In a 2010 column, Colum Lynch of Foreign Policy magazine criticized the resolution as one of the ten worst UN resolutions in history. After the Soviet Union ended its boycott of the council, it used its veto power to block any further resolutions against North Korea. In response, Acheson introduced a new procedure to the UN General Assembly to allow a member state to bypass the UNSC and seek approval in the General Assembly, including recommendations on the use of force, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 377. When this was passed, it allowed for open-ended General Assembly emergency special sessions to address threats to international peace and security for which the UNSC was unable to pass a resolution. Lynch wrote that the creation of this rule caused unintended negative consequences for the United States in 1997 when several Arab states began the Tenth emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly to address the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This session, convened as a way around a US veto, spanned 30 meetings over the next ten years, and has never formally been closed.