China has formally invited North Korea’s leader-in-waiting to visit, but it was not clear when Kim Jong-un would make the trip, a South Korean lawmaker said yesterday, quoting a senior spy agency official.
China is the only major power isolated North Korea can count on as an ally. Kim Jong-un is North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s youngest son and heir apparent, who came into the public eye in September when he was named to a senior ruling party post and promoted to the rank of four-star general.
South Korea’s spy agency believes Kim Jong-un is likely to -accept the invitation and visit Beijing soon, said the lawmaker who is a member of the parliamentary intelligence committee after a closed-door briefing on Friday.
Senior officials from the spy agency attended the briefing and members of parliament are asked not to disclose information they were briefed on, the lawmaker said, declining to be identified.
Little is known about Kim Jong-un other than he is in his late 20s and received a Swiss education. South Korean officials said the North’s official media have been on a campaign to paint him as the person best fit for leadership of the state founded by his grandfather.
The visit, if it takes place, will boost Kim Jong-un’s standing as the North’s next leader, as China remains the reclusive North’s main economic and political backer. Kim Jong-un is likely to ask China for large-scale economic aid when he visits, a Japanese newspaper reported earlier last week, adding he could go as early as this month, after the end of China’s National People’s Congress.
Yesterday, the North’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper called for an unconditional resumption of talks, saying in commentary carried by the KCNA news agency its offer for negotiations with the South remains on the table.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has