President Chen Shui-bian (
While receiving Lee Han-dong (
Chen said Taiwan also still wants to express its appreciation to South Korea for the friendly diplomatic strategies it employed in 1991, which enabled Taiwan, China and Hong Kong to join APEC at the same time.
"I hope South Korea, the host country of the APEC forum this year, maintains its original intention to adopt agile diplomatic strategies and political wisdom to support Taiwan," Chen said.
He expressed his appreciation for Lee's longstanding goodwill toward Taiwan.
Lee was South Korea's prime minister from 2000 to 2002. Prior to that, he was a member of parliament for more than two decades.
Lee, who attended the inauguration of the Democratic Pacific Union (DPU) earlier this week, said he hoped the organization's three core values -- democracy, peace and prosperity -- would become deeply rooted in Asia.
"I will do my best to further promote bilateral relations between Taiwan and South Korea, especially in the sectors of economic development and trade," Lee said.
Chen said that relations between Taiwan and South Korea had been strengthened recently by the re-opening of air links, allowing visa-free visits and the establishment of a new Taiwan office in Busan.
Last year, bilateral trade was valued at a record high of US$16.9 billion.
Tourist visits also reached a high, with 320,000 Taiwanese traveling to South Korea.
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:
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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