A Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) official said yesterday the administration will not take any action to resume flight service between Taiwan and South Korea's respective carriers until the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) gives the green light.
"The answer whether flight service will be resumed between the two countries' carriers lies with MOFA, not the CAA," said Abraham Huang (黃錫榮), deputy director of CAA.
"At present, the CAA has not received any instruction from the MOFA to prepare for talks with its counterparts in South Korea about resumption of such flight services," Huang told the Taipei Times.
But Huang said the CAA would not reject Korean airlines' applications to run chartered flights between the two countries.
The Taiwanese government terminated its aviation pact with South Korea shortly after South Korea established diplomatic ties with China in 1992.
Over the past 10 years, both sides have made several attempts to resume flight services. But all negotiations failed.
"Resumption of the flight service will bring more benefits to South Korea than Taiwan," he said.
Therefore, South Korea's need to resume the flight service is more urgent than Taiwan's, Huang said.
Meanwhile, Johnson Tseng (曾盛海), chairman of the Travel Agent Association of ROC, Taiwan, said South Korea and China will be the most popular tourism destinations for Taiwan's tourists next year.
"If the Cabinet wants to achieve its goal to boost the number of foreign tourists visiting Taiwan every year to 5 million by 2008, there are two things it must do," Tseng said.
The two things are resuming flight services between Taiwan and South Korea and allowing Chinese people to visit Taiwan, Tseng said.
"If the government fails to do these two things, I dare say the Cabinet's project to boost the number of foreign tourists will definitely fail," Tseng said.
According to Huang, 10 years ago, before Taiwan's aviation pact with South Korea was terminated, about 300,000 Taiwanese visited South Korea and 200,000 South Koreans visited Taiwan every year.
After the aviation pact ended, the number of Taiwanese tourists to South Korea dropped to 100,000 and the number of South Korean tourists to Taiwan plummeted to around 70,000 a year, Tseng said.
"If the flight service can be resumed, the number of Taiwanese tourists to South Korea and the number of South Korean tourists to Taiwan will both increase to 500,000 to 600,000 annually," Tseng said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications' Tourism Bureau said the number of Taiwanese tourists to South Korea amounted to 117,821 last year.
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