A Japanese woman applied for political asylum in North Korea while she was on a trip to China, the official North Korean news agency and Japan's foreign ministry officials said yesterday, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.
"A Japanese woman, Kazumi Kitagawa, illegally entered the DPRK [North Korea] recently while making a sightseeing tour of a third country and sought asylum," said the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in a dispatch monitored in Tokyo.
"She is now undergoing investigation by the competent organ," it said.
A foreign ministry official in Tokyo told reporters North Korea's embassy in Beijing had informed Tokyo's mission there on Monday that a Japanese woman had entered North Korea and that the "third country" was China.
The official did not identify the woman or give her age other than to say she was a Japanese national, although he said the foreign ministry had been in contact with her family.
Kyodo News agency said the woman was in her 20s.
The foreign ministry has no information on the woman's current whereabouts in North Korea, or whether she has any Korean ancestry, or affiliation to groups sympathetic to North Korea, the official said, stressing that she had broken no Japanese law and her family had not asked for help.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
RSS