Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) founder, chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) is scheduled to visit Japan from Sunday to Thursday next week, and would meet high-ranking officials to discuss international and cross-strait affairs, the TPP said.
Ko would spend most of his time in Tokyo and would meet with administrative and legislative officials, TPP Secretary-General Chou Tai-chu (周台竹) said, adding that former Taipei deputy mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) would accompany Ko on the trip.
Ko, 63, spent three weeks in the US last month and was formally nominated as his party’s presidential candidate on May 17.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
In an interview with Nikkei Asia last month, Ko said that Japan, despite probably being under more pressure than Taiwan in terms of being caught in the middle of China-US tensions, has been dealing with the issue in a more flexible way.
He referred to former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) advice to him, saying that Taiwan should look to Japan if it faces challenges relating to the two superpowers.
Ko officially launched his presidential campaign in Taipei on May 20.
He said he was determined to run because he believed that Taiwan should be united, not divided, that it should be a facilitator of dialogue, not a “chess piece” between the US and China, that it should be Ilha Formosa — a beautiful island — rather than “the most dangerous place on Earth” as described by The Economist.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS