The reclamation of three parcels of government-owned land in South Korea shows that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has taken previous Control Yuan corrective measures to heart, but the ministry should redouble its efforts, Control Yuan member Gau Fheng-shian (高鳳仙) said on Thursday.
The Control Yuan issued a corrective measures notice to the ministry in 2013 demanding that it and the Taipei Mission in South Korea make efforts to reclaim 27 parcels of land in South Korea which had allegedly been occupied illegally by Chinese compatriot organizations.
The Control Yuan report in 2013 said that the ministry had incomplete files on the original contracts with the Compatriots Service Committee, in effect the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) chapter in South Korea, which was leasing government-owned land in Seoul at no cost.
Photo: Taipei Times
Earlier efforts by the mission in Seoul in March 2012 asking the committee to sign a contract as per the National Property Act (國有財產法) went unanswered, the Control Yuan report said.
Over the past three years since the corrective measures notice was issued, the Control Yuan has repeatedly asked the ministry and the mission to resolve the issue, Gau said.
While the committee and the mission are using the same building, the building is registered in the name of the government, Gau said, adding that the committee had refused to sign an entrusted management agreement.
“Perhaps they are afraid that the land would be returned to its rightful owner,” Gau said.
Gau said the committee resented a clause in the contract which stated that the mission, if need arises, could notify the committee three months in advance that it would be reclaiming the property unconditionally.
The committee claimed that it owned the land, despite it being registered in the government’s name, Gau said.
Others documents, signed by the Qing Empire’s military attache to the Kingdom of Joseon between 1909 and 1912, said that the plots of land were “forever leased” to local Chinese compatriot organizations, Gau said.
The issue had not been taken to court due to fears that a verdict would return the land not to Taiwan, but to China, given that the issue concerns Qing Empire legal documents, Gau said.
Ministry spokesperson Wang Pei-ling (王珮玲) said that the ministry would investigate the issue and report to the Executive Yuan every three months.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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