North Korea condemned US President George W. Bush yesterday for meeting a prominent defector who suffered a decade of abuses in a prison camp, saying the move chilled the atmosphere for the communist nation to return to nuclear disarmament talks.
Meanwhile, a high-ranking North Korean delegation in Seoul held a rare meeting yesterday with South Korea's president as the two sides held high-level talks to arrange family reunions and military contacts across their Cold War border at bilateral talks running alongside efforts to coax the North back to nuclear negotiations.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun urged the communist state to seek a peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue soon at a meeting with North Korean chief Cabinet counselor Kwon Ho-ung, Roh's spokesman Kim Man-soo said.
The two Koreas scheduled a closing session for their talks yesterday evening but it was later delayed, indicating there was still more negotiating to be done on an agreement.
Bush met last week at the White House with Kang Chol-hwan, a defector now working as a journalist in South Korea and author of The Aquariums of Pyongyang, detailing his life in a North Korean prison where he was incarcerated as a child with his family.
Referring to Kang as "human trash," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said Washington's calls for improved human rights in the communist nation show it "has yet to come up with a firm position that it would recognize and respect [the North] as a negotiating partner."
"It cannot be interpreted as anything other than a move pouring cold water" on efforts to resume the nuclear talks, KCNA wrote in a commentary.
Just last week, the North's reclusive leader Kim Jong-il held a surprise meeting with a visiting South Korean envoy that raised hopes of the country's return to the talks it has boycotted for a year -- saying it could resume negotiations if it gets appropriate respect from Washington. Roh noted yesterday that Kim had also said the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was the dying wish of his father, North Korea's founding ruler Kim Il-sung.
It has been a year since the last round of nuclear talks convened June 23 last year, with the North refusing to return citing "hostile" US policies. The US government said Wednesday it would provide 50,000 tonnes of food to North Korea in a humanitarian decision unrelated to efforts to convince the North to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
At this week's talks between the Koreas, South Korea has proposed the sides resume military talks next month. It also requested that family reunions at the North's Diamond Mountain resort restart in August, and that relatives unable to make the trip be allowed to see each other via the Internet.
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79
RSS