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.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
RSS