Rare talks between North and South Korea fizzled yesterday with the rivals unable to even agree on a venue for the meeting, which had already been clouded by Pyongyang’s threat to restart its nuclear arms plant.
The problems with the talks could add to growing frustration among regional powers with North Korea, which defied South Korea, Japan and the US earlier this month to launch a rocket in what was widely seen as a disguised long-range missile test.
North Korea hurriedly requested the meeting last week over a joint industrial park located just north of the countries’ heavily armed border. The venture was once hailed as a model of economic cooperation, but has now increasingly been the focus of mounting tension.
The South Korean delegation crossed into the Kaesong Industrial Park yesterday, but failed to have formal talks because of differences over the venue and format, the South’s Unification Ministry said.
“If the discussions do not reach a conclusion, the two sides could meet again on Wednesday,” a ministry official said.
Seoul is trying to win the release of a South Korean worker held for nearly a month at Kaesong by the North on suspicion of criticizing North Korea’s communist system.
Pyonyang, angered by the decision of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak after he took office a year ago to cut a steady flow of aid to the North, has disrupted work at the Kaesong Industrial Park at times to put pressure on Seoul to drop its hard line.
North Korea has all but suspended dialogue with Lee’s government and dubbed him a traitor to the Korean nation for tying aid, which has helped prop up the North’s wobbly economy, to progress Pyongyang makes in giving up nuclear arms.
But the North may now be even more dependent on the money generated at Kaesong because the UN has called for tightened sanctions on Pyongyang after its defiant rocket launch earlier this month.
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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