Seoul plans to partner with Taiwan, China and several Southeast Asian countries in a bid to obtain UN world documentary heritage status for “comfort women,” a South Korean official said yesterday.
“We will file an application with the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] to list ‘comfort women’ in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register,” said Kim Un-ji, a section head of the South Korean Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.
Seoul will cooperate with countries that fell victim to Japanese colonization and saw many of their women turned into sex slaves by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II, Kim said, adding that South Korea would seek Taiwan’s support because the two countries have maintained close cooperation on the issue.
Surviving Taiwanese comfort women have frequently voiced support for their South Korean counterparts’ efforts to seek a formal apology from Japan, he said.
The ministry is collecting data and information on comfort women from several countries, Yonhap News Agency recently reported. Yonhap said the ministry is scheduled to finalize the compilation by the end of this year and will submit it to the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism early next year in preparation for filing an application with UNESCO.
Seoul will sponsor a series of seminars and activities to help the world better understand the need to list “comfort women” in the register, Yonhap said.
The Memory of the World Program was established by UNESCO in 1992 to preserve and maintain access to collections of documentary heritage around the world, including libraries and archives, which have often been threatened by conflicts, social upheaval or lack of resources.
The Memory of the World Register was founded in 1995 to provide a listing of the material inscribed to the register.
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Democracies must remain united in the face of a shifting geopolitical landscape, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday, while emphasizing the importance of Taiwan’s security to the world. “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism,” Tsai said at the annual forum in the Danish capital. Noting a “new geopolitical landscape” in which global trade and security face “uncertainty and unpredictability,” Tsai said that democracies must remain united and be more committed to building up resilience together in the face of challenges. Resilience “allows us to absorb shocks, adapt under
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
RSS