Four South Korean legislators are demanding that China punish security agents who disrupted a news conference about North Korean refugees, but China yesterday said the politicians should apologize for breaking the law.
South Korea demanded an explanation from Beijing of the 11-hour standoff at a Beijing hotel Wednesday, where the agents shut off the lights, shoved some reporters out and prevented others from talking to the South Koreans.
The lawmakers had planned to discuss North Korean asylum seekers, a politically sensitive issue for China -- Pyongyang's closest ally.
The legislators demanded that Beijing punish the men who stopped the news conference, said a South Korean Embassy official, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity.
"The legislators called it an unprecedented violation of human rights and freedom of speech,'' the official said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan (
"If the situation is true, why should we apologize to them?" Kong said at a regular briefing. "I feel on the other hand, they should make apologies to the Chinese side."
Hundreds of North Koreans fleeing their hardline communist homeland have been allowed to leave for the rival South after breaking into embassies, consulates and schools in China. While Beijing is obliged by treaty to send home the asylum seekers, it hasn't done so in cases that become public.
Chinese authorities insist they are economic migrants and refused to grant them refugee status.
The South Korean legislators, members of the opposition Grand National Party, "didn't come to China for friendship, for more understanding and for cooperation. They came here in support of activities which are in contradiction or in violation of China's laws and regulations," Kong said.
"These four persons are congressmen ... and if they want to further encourage these illegal entrants to do such things, we will not allow this," Kong said.
South Korea's Foreign Ministry yesterday summoned China's Ambassador Li Bin and demanded China's explanation on the incident, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported.
On Wednesday, the lawmakers and reporters sat in darkness for almost two hours. After the lights came back on, the men who broke up the news conference barricaded the door with chairs and sat on them.
Ambassador Li Bin (
The Grand National Party yesterday blamed the incident on China's "rudeness and arrogance."
"This is in one word an insult to the Republic of Korea, and a violence toward lawmakers who represent the people," it said.
In a statement issued before the conference, the lawmakers appealed to the Chinese government to allow North Koreans hiding in China to leave the country and to release Choi Young-hoon, a jailed South Korean activist.
The lawmakers departed yesterday morning for the eastern coastal city of Qingdao, where Choi is serving a five-year prison term on migrant smuggling charges, the embassy official said. He had been accused of helping North Korean asylum seekers, the lawmakers said.
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
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