The United States has decided to cut funding to the United Nations Developmental Aid program due to the misuse of funds going directly to North Korea:

The United States said Thursday it would withhold all contributions to the United Nations Development Program. It alleges that the UNDP mismanaged its North Korea operations, leading to a large influx of cash into the authoritarian regime.

Washington is also considering a proposal that the U.N. stop all programs in the North except those for humanitarian assistance, the Yonhap New Agency quoted Alejandro Wolff, acting U.S. envoy to the United Nations, as saying.

The Japanese are actually taking an even stronger stand by recommending ending all non-humanitarian UN aid programs in North Korea:

Yonhap reported that Japan went further, its envoy suggesting that the U.N. stop all programs in North Korea except for direct humanitarian aid.

The South Korean news agency quoted Wolff as saying the Japanese argument “is quite compelling” and the U.S. will consider the proposal.

A whole lot of background information on this scandal can be found here, but basically a lot of the UNDP aid going to North Korea was unaccounted for hard cash.  New UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has authorized an investigation into this.  What is going to be most interesting about this is how vigorously Ban will investigate this.  This  is really his first test to see how serious he is about cracking down on UN corruption.  The Wall Street Journal has been so bold to even declare this Ban’s first UN cover up.  It is actually a pretty good article that is worth reading, but I agree with One Free Korea that we need to give Ban some more time before we declare him just another corrupt UN bureaucrat interested in only keeping things business as usual, but the clock is ticking.

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