The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office yesterday said it is researching South Korean law and reading South Korean media reports about an investigation into the alleged leak of restricted technology to Taiwan.
South Korean media reported on Friday that employees from Hanhwa Ocean Ltd, formerly known as Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, had leaked designs of the DSME1400, a derivative of the Jang Bogo-class submarine, from Daewoo to CSBC Corp, Taiwan, and that the design was being used to develop Taiwan’s first domestically built submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤), or “Narwhal.”
The issue only came to light after “pro-China Taiwanese legislators” blew the whistle, the reports said.
Photo: Wu Cheng-feng, Taipei Times
On Sept. 28 last year, Taiwan’s Indigenous Defense Submarine Program head Huang Shu-kuang (黃曙光) said that “certain legislators” made it difficult for the program to purchase critical equipment.
Retired navy captain Kuo Hsi (郭璽) on Friday repeated claims that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) was the legislator in question, alleging that Ma had leaked information to China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.
The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office said it takes the South Korean reporting seriously and has ordered the High Prosecutors’ Office and the Kaohsiung and Taipei district prosecutors’ offices to list the reports as reference material.
Meanwhile, Ma and Kuo are being investigated for allegedly leaking national defense secrets to foreign entities, the High Prosecutors’ Office said.
The office said its investigations are ongoing and that it would summon other people, including key figures in the indigenous submarine-building project as well as Huang, adding that it is not ruling out writing to the South Korean Mission in Taipei for clarification.
Separately, Kuo on Friday showed a statement that he said originated from Strategic Industry & Innovation Technology (SI Innotec) chief executive Park Mal-sik.
The statement allegedly said that “SI Innotec had never leaked any confidential materials on [South] Korean submarines to any agency in Taiwan,” and that “SI Innotec regrets the impact resultant from Taiwanese legislators on the legislature’s National Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee forwarding classified information to the [South] Korean prosecutors.”
Ma on Friday said that Huang and Kuo were “arms brokers” who were “stealing state secrets from other countries” in the name of Taiwan’s indigenous submarine-building project, adding that this shamed all Taiwanese.
Ma said the South Korean reports were at odds with the CSBC statement in July that the Hai Kun’s design was 100 percent Taiwanese, adding: “One side must be lying.”
Ma urged the Ministry of National Defense to launch a general review of the entire project, from equipment suppliers, design blueprints and the export permits obtained to ensure that there are no similar issues, fraud or theft.
Additional reporting by Hung Chen-hung, Chen Feng-li, and Lin Hsin-han
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