A book discussing the potential consequences of Korean unification serves as a warning for supporters of Taiwan's unification with China, a leading political commentator said.
The book, South Korea and North Korea, United We Fall, was written by Park Seong-cho, a professor with the Unification Policy Research Team at Seoul National University.
The author, a South Korean academic who has been based in Germany for 30 years, looks at the unification of Germany and then predicts the unification of South and North Korea will result in much greater instability.
Commenting on the book, Chin Heng-wei (金恆煒), a political commentator and editor-in-chief of Contemporary Monthly magazine, said that what interested him in the work was the argument regarding "the fall of unification."
Chin said the experiences of German unification showed that many were dissatisfied with what unification had brought them. One group was bound to take advantage of the other, he said.
"The book, which dampened enthusiasm for unification with North Korea in South Korea, provides new angles for viewing the unification matter in Taiwan," Chin said.
The book, first published in Korean last June, sparked fierce discussion in South Korea, according to translator Rick Chu (
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS