North Korea has likely sent two US journalists detained by border guards last week to the capital Pyongyang for questioning, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported yesterday.
The US State Department has expressed concern over the fate of the two women, who are believed to have been taken into custody while filming near the Tumen river, an escape route for those fleeing the communist state.
Confirmation by North Korea’s state media on Saturday of their detention showed the central government was directly involved in their case, Yonhap said, quoting an unnamed source in China.
“Given the significance of the case, it is very likely that the two US journalists have been sent to Pyongyang for questioning directly by the North’s security and military agencies,” the source told Yonhap.
The North may use the case “politically,” it added. Government officials in Seoul could not confirm the Yonhap report.
North Korea on Saturday confirmed that it had detained the duo for “illegally intruding into the territory” of the communist country on March 17.
The official Korean Central News Agency said in a terse dispatch: “A competent organ is now investigating the case,” giving no further details of the whereabouts of the Americans.
Diplomatic sources said Washington and Pyongyang were in talks over the release of the two, identified as Euna Lee, a Korean-American, and Laura Ling (凌志美), a Taiwanese-American, who both work for Current TV in California.
Ling’s family emigrated from Taiwan to the US several years ago and now lives in Los Angeles.
Ling’s sister, Lisa Ling (凌志慧), a former co-host of the American TV talk show The View and is now a correspondent for National Geographic Channel’s Explorer.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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