South Korean, US and Japanese warships launched their first trilateral anti-submarine drills in five years yesterday, after North Korea renewed missile tests in an apparent response to bilateral training by South Korean and US forces.
Pyongyang’s most recent five missiles launches, the first such tests in a month, also came before and after US Vice President Kamala Harris visited South Korea on Thursday and reaffirmed the “ironclad” US commitment to the security of its Asian allies.
The one-day three-nation training off the Korean Peninsula’s east coast is meant to cope with a North Korean push to advance its ability to fire missiles from submarines, the South Korean navy said in a statement.
Photo: AFP / South Korean Defence Ministry
North Korea has in the past few years been building bigger submarines, including a nuclear-powered one, and testing sophisticated missiles that can be fired from them.
South Korean officials last week said they had detected signs that North Korea was preparing to test-fire a missile from a submarine.
The joint drills involve the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, and US, South Korean and Japanese destroyers, the navy statement said.
During the training, the ships were to search and track a US nuclear-powered submarine posing as a North Korean submarine, media reports said.
“We will respond and neutralize any forms of North Korean provocations in an overwhelming and decisive manner,” South Korean navy Captain Cho Chung-ho, commander of his country’s troops who took part in the training, was quoted as saying in the statement.
The training came as South Korea and Japan are looking to mend ties frayed over history and trade disputes.
The two countries together host a total of 80,000 US troops.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
COUNTERING HOSTILITY: The draft bill would require the US to increase diplomatic pressure on China and would impose sanctions on those who sabotage undersea cable networks US lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill to bolster the resilience of Taiwan’s submarine cables to counter China’s hostile activities. The proposal, titled the critical undersea infrastructure resilience initiative act, was cosponsored by Republican representatives Mike Lawler and Greg Stanton, and Democratic Representative Dave Min. US Senators John Curtis and Jacky Rosen also introduced a companion bill in the US Senate, which has passed markup at the chamber’s Committee on Foreign Relations. The House’s version of the bill would prioritize the deployment of sensors to detect disruptions or potential sabotage in real-time and enhance early warning capabilities through global intelligence sharing frameworks,
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
RSS