A delegation from the Youth Division of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is arriving in Taiwan tomorrow on a five-day trip that includes a meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and a visit to the grave of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) to pay their respects.
The 11-person delegation, led by division head Masanobu Ogura, a member of the Japanese House of Representatives for Tokyo’s 23rd District, are also to meet with other senior government officials before they leave on Saturday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
In addition to paying their respects at Lee’s grave in a New Taipei City military cemetery, the group is to visit Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, it said.
Photo: Lin Tsuei-yi, Taipei Times
Lee, Taiwan’s first popularly elected president, died at the age of 97 in July 2020. He had received a Japanese education and was a highly respected figure in Japan.
Ogura, who was appointed head of the Youth Division in September last year, is friendly toward Taiwan, the ministry said.
The Youth Division, comprised of younger lawmakers in Japan’s National Diet, has long been an important Taiwan-Japan platform and sends annual delegations to Taiwan to exchange views on issues of mutual interest.
Many previous division heads went on to serve in high government positions, such as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, the ministry said.
The delegation includes Diet members Norikazu Suzuki, Hayato Suzuki, Susumu Yamaguchi and Daisuke Nishino, it added.
In other news, the ministry said in a statement on Thursday that Taiwan’s new top envoy to South Korea is a highly qualified legal expert with extensive experience in Asia-Pacific affairs.
The statement was issued after a South Korean newspaper questioned Taiwan’s choice of Liang Kuang-chung (梁光中), head of the ministry’s legal department, as the new representative to Seoul.
Liang is to replace Tang Diann-wen (唐殿文), who served as head of the Taipei Mission in Korea since September 2018.
Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) on Thursday said that Liang was an appropriate choice to be Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to South Korea because of his considerable experience in the region, adding that Liang would promote even closer ties with Seoul.
Liang has been head of the ministry’s Department of Treaty and Legal Affairs since October 2018, an ambassador-level post qualifying him to head representative offices and embassies, a source said.
Liang and Tang are arranging the transition, but no date has been announced, Ou added.
An article on Tuesday in the Chosun Ilbo said Taipei was downgrading South Korean ties by choosing Liang, whose last overseas post was as head of the representative office in Ho Chi Minh City, a position at the consul-general level.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
A magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 8:31am today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was located in Hualien County, about 70.3 kilometers south southwest of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 23.2km, according to the administration. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County, where it measured 3 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 2 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the CWA said.
The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese
RSS