The US and North Korea’s neighbors may meet soon to find a new way to deal with Pyongyang after it snubbed formal talks on ending its nuclear program, conducted an atomic test and threatened war in response to UN sanctions, an official said yesterday.
South Korea has proposed the talks with four other nations that have been trying to negotiate an end to the North’s nuclear program for years. The US and Japan have agreed to participate, while China and Russia have yet to respond, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said.
He said it remains to be seen where or when the meeting — if it materializes — would take place, but one possibility is on the sidelines of a regional security forum scheduled in Phuket, Thailand, next month.
“We have to see how things will play out,” said the official, requesting anonymity because he was discussing a plan still in the works.
Pyongyang has vowed to bolster its nuclear arsenal and threatened war to protest sanctions imposed by the UN after its nuclear test on May 25. It also test-fired a ballistic missile and is reportedly preparing for another long-range missile launch and a third nuclear test.
The provocations appear to be partly aimed at strengthening the North’s internal unity as its ailing leader Kim Jong-il prepares to hand over power to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un.
Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun reported yesterday that Jong-un was working as the acting chairman of the nation’s National Defense Commission, reinforcing his position as the successor. The 26-year-old is supporting his father, who is chairman of the commission, the country’s highest post.
“He is focusing on the job as acting chairman. If something happens to our general, he will automatically take the chairman’s position,” the report quoted a source close to the North Korean leadership as saying.
Also yesterday, the regime unleashed a fresh round of threats against the sanctions in what has become an almost daily dose of condemnation, transmitted through its official media.
“The implementation of sanctions means war,” North Korea’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
It also warned of a “merciless retaliatory strike” against South Korea if Seoul tried to infringe on the North’s sovereignty in the pretext of implementing sanctions.
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
A former television news host and six military personnel — active and retired — have been indicted on espionage charges, Kaohsiung prosecutors said yesterday. Lin Chen-you (林宸佑), a former CTi News host and YouTuber, last year allegedly made videos at the direction of a Chinese agent criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party’s recall campaign, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office told a news conference in Kaohsiung. He allegedly received 4,325 tether coins for the videos from an unidentified person surnamed Huang (黃), believed to be an agent of a hostile foreign power, they said. Lin, also known as Ma Te (馬德), has a show named
RSS