Taiwan Sinks Korea Splits
Nauru quits Taiwan province to diplomatically recognise Beijing, Kim Jong Un said DPRK would no longer pursue reconciliation with South Korea and called for rewriting the North’s constitution
UPDATE: The Pacific Island country of Nauru announced on Monday that it was cutting relations with Taiwan province and resuming ties with Beijing.
The DPP, which had held a majority in the 113-seat body since 2016, suffered a net loss of 11 seats on Saturday, dropping from 62 to 51 and losing its position of dominance.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would no longer pursue reconciliation with South Korea and called for rewriting the North’s constitution to eliminate the idea of shared statehood between the war-divided countries, state media said Tuesday.
Only 31 minutes after the caucuses in the Midwestern US state had begun Monday evening, former President Donald Trump was projected to easily win the first major test of the 2024 Republican primary race.
Nauru establishes 'diplomatic ties' with China
By Wang Qingyun
The Pacific Island country announced on Monday that it was cutting relations with Taiwan region and resuming ties with China.
In response, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the Nauru government's decision shows that the one-China principle has overwhelming support and represents the trend of the world.
There is but one China in the world, Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory, and the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China, the spokesperson said.
This has been affirmed in Resolution 2758 of the UN General Assembly, and is a prevailing consensus among the international community, the spokesperson said, adding that China has established diplomatic relations with 182 countries on the basis of the one-China principle.
China stands ready work with Nauru to open new chapters of bilateral relations on the basis of one-China principle, the spokesperson said.
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KMT wins most seats in Taiwan
By Hsiao Alison
No party won a majority in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan for the first time since 2004, after Saturday's elections saw the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) win 51 seats, the Kuomintang (KMT) 52, and the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) eight.
The DPP, which had held a majority in the 113-seat body since 2016, suffered a net loss of 11 seats on Saturday, dropping from 62 to 51 and losing its position of dominance.
With no party able to command a majority, which would need at least 57 seats, it is widely expected that the KMT and the TPP will negotiate a deal to prevent the DPP from retaining the speakership.
Outside of the big three, the New Power Party, which went into the election with three seats, won none in the first-past-the-post electoral districts, nor did it meet the 5 percent threshold to win at-large seats.
In addition to the party seats, two independent legislators won seats, both of whom are ideologically aligned with the KMT in the Legislative Yuan.
In the 2020 legislative election, the DPP won 61 legislative seats, of which 46 were from single-member districts, two were Indigenous legislators, and 13 were at-large.
The KMT won 38 seats in 2020, of which 22 were single-member district legislators, three were Indigenous legislators, and 13 were at-large legislators.
The TPP won five at-large legislative seats in 2020, while the New Power Party had three and the Taiwan Statebuilding Party one. Four single-member district legislators and one Indigenous lawmaker were without party affiliation.
The last time no party had a majority was in 2004, when Taiwan's Legislature had 225 seats. The DPP won 89 seats, the KMT 79, the People First Party (PFP) 34, and the Taiwan Solidarity Union 12.
The KMT, along with the ideologically aligned PFP and some members of the Non-Partisan Solidarity Alliance continued a working majority from 2004 to 2008, when the Legislative Yuan was reduced to 113 seats after a constitutional amendment was passed.
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ROK hostility splits DPRK reconciliation
by Kim Tonghyung with Song Jiwon
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would no longer pursue reconciliation with South Korea and called for rewriting the North’s constitution to eliminate the idea of shared statehood between the war-divided countries, state media said Tuesday.
The historic step to discard a decades-long pursuit of a peaceful unification, which was based on a sense of national homogeneity shared by both Koreas, comes amid heightened tensions where the pace of both Kim’s weapons development and the South’s military exercises with the United States have intensified in a tit-for-tat.
Some experts say Kim could be aiming to diminishing South Korea’s voice in regional security matters and communicate more clearly that he would seek to deal directly with the United States over the nuclear standoff, which has deepened amid disagreements over the stringent U.S.-led sanctions over his growing nuclear weapons program.
Declaring the South as a permanent adversary, not as a potential partner for reconciliation, could also be part of efforts to improve the credibility of Kim’s escalatory nuclear doctrine, which authorizes the military to launch preemptive nuclear attacks against adversaries if it perceives the leadership in Pyongyang as under threat.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “concerned about what we’re hearing, what we’re seeing” in the cut in contacts, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
“For us, it’s very clear that diplomatic engagement remains the only possible path for sustainable peace on the Korean peninsula, for a complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” he told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.
The North Korean steps come as Kim has been actively boosting his partnerships with Moscow and Beijing as he attempts to break out of diplomatic isolation and increase his leverage by joining a united front against Washington.
North Korea also abolished the key government agencies that had been tasked with managing relations with South Korea during a meeting of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament on Monday, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said.
The Supreme People’s Assembly said the two Koreas are locked in an “acute confrontation” and that it would be a serious mistake for the North to regard the South as a partner in diplomacy.
“The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, the National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the (Diamond Mountain) International Tourism Administration, tools which existed for (North-South) dialogue, negotiations and cooperation, are abolished,” the assembly said in a statement .
During his speech, Kim blamed South Korea and the United States for raising tensions in the region, citing their expanded joint military exercises, deployments of U.S. strategic military assets, and their trilateral security cooperation with Japan as turning the Korean Peninsula into a dangerous war-risk zone, KCNA said.
Kim said it has become impossible for the North to pursue reconciliation and a peaceful reunification with the South, which he described as “top-class stooges” of outside powers that are obsessed with confrontational maneuvers.
He called for the assembly to rewrite the North’s constitution to define South Korea as the North’s “primary foe and invariable principal enemy.” The new constitution should specify North Korea would pursue “occupying, subjugating and reclaiming” South Korea as part of the North’s territory if another war erupts on the Korean Peninsula, Kim said.
He also ordered the removal of past symbols of inter-Korean reconciliation, to “completely eliminate such concepts as ‘reunification,’ ‘reconciliation’ and ‘fellow countrymen’ from the national history of our republic.”
He specifically demanded cutting off cross-border railway sections and tearing down a monument in Pyongyang honoring a pursuit for reunification, which Kim described as an eyesore.
“It is the final conclusion drawn from the bitter history of the inter-Korean relations that we cannot go along the road of national restoration and reunification together,” he said.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol during a Cabinet meeting in Seoul said Kim’s comments show the “anti-national and anti-historical” nature of the government in Pyongyang. Yoon said the South was maintaining firm defense readiness and would punish the North “multiple times hard” if it provokes it.
“(The North‘s fake peace tactic that threatened us to choose between ‘war’ and ‘peace’ no longer works,” Yoon said.
In his speech at the assembly, Kim reiterated that the North has no intention to unilaterally start a war, but has no intentions to avoid one either. Citing his growing military nuclear program, he said a nuclear conflict in the Korean Peninsula would end South Korea’s existence and bring “unimaginable disaster and defeat to the United States.”
Kim had made similar remarks during a year-end ruling party meeting, saying ties between the Koreas have become “fixed into the relations between two states hostile to each other.” At a political conference last week, he defined South Korea as the North’s “principal enemy” and threatened to annihilate it if provoked.
The assembly said North Korea’s government would take “practical measures” to implement the decision to abolish the agencies handling dialogue and cooperation with the South.
The National Committee for Peaceful Reunification has been North Korea’s main agency handling inter-Korean affairs since its establishment in 1961.
The National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the Diamond Mountain International Tourism Administration had been set to handle joint economic and tourism projects between the Koreas during a brief period of reconciliation in the 2000s.
Such projects, including a jointly operated factory park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong and South Korean tours to the North’s Diamond Mountain resort, have been halted for years as relations between the rivals worsened over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
Those activities are currently banned under U.N. Security Council resolutions against the North that have tightened since 2016 as Kim accelerated his nuclear and missile tests.
Kim has further vowed to expand his nuclear arsenal and severed virtually all cooperation with the South. He has dialed up his weapons demonstrations to a record pace since the start of 2022, using the distraction created by Russia’s war on Ukraine to expand his military capabilities.
There’s also growing international concern over an alleged arms cooperation deal between North Korea and Russia. The United States and South Korea say North Korea has provided Russia with arms, including artillery and missiles, to help its fight in Ukraine.
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French Grammar
