The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday that no irregularities were found in the country's de facto embassy in South Korea's communication services, in response to media reports of chronic lapses in the office's communications security that have led to a "serious" leakage of confidential diplomatic information.
Officials from the ministry and the Bureau of Investigation arrived in Seoul on Aug. 17 to conduct "routine checks" on the mission's communications security network, ministry spokesman Michel Lu (呂慶龍) said.
"They did not find any irregularities," he added.
The Chinese-language United Daily News, however, reported that staff in the Seoul office had "discovered" some of the missions confidential files had been leaked just days before the arrival of the team from Taiwan.
The staff checked the office's internal Web sites and found "unclear signs" which indicated the mission's data had "probably" been intercepted.
They reported the situation to the ministry. The ministry and the Bureau of Investigation then decided to add a telecommunications expert to the team, the report said.
The report suggested that "disruptions" in the mission's computer network and telephone services could have been done by "spies," but added that the nationality of the "spies" remains unclear.
Lu said the investigative team has returned to Taiwan and that it will report to the ministry on Friday.
The Bureau of Investigation, which made an official statement responding to the report, declined to say whether confidential data in the mission had been "intercepted" or whether "foreign spies" were involved in the operation.
A bureau official said the team checked all phone lines at the mission and the residence of Li Tsai-fang (
"The team did nothing about the mission's computers. It found some phone lines in Li's residence had not been properly installed. Besides, the problems with phone lines in the mission resulted from unstable voltages. Apart from this, the team did not find any other irregularities," the official said.
Meanwhile, the report also said an official at the mission occupied one of the 25 premises Taiwan owned in South Korea when Taiwan and South Korea cut diplomatic ties in 1992.
"These premises belong to our government, and the ministry is very concerned about the matter. It dispatched four experts from the National Property Bureau to investigate the case in April.
They found nothing wrong," Lu said.
Nevertheless, sources said Li would be returning to Taipei today to report to senior ministry officials regarding the handling of the government's properties in South Korea.
Speaking to reporters at a seminar in Seoul yesterday, Li denied the report of his office's communication security lapses, and called for a thorough investigation to prove the innocence of his staff.
"The ministry and the bureau have sent a team to Seoul to conduct security checks ... But the move was to prevent attacks by international hackers. As the Law of National Secrets Protection (
"There is no need to look at the security checks in such a strange manner," added Li.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching