• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Fresh indictment of South Koreans sparks war of words between DPP, KMT

ROC Central News Agency

01/05/2024 09:52 PM

Taipei, Jan. 5 (CNA) The latest probe by South Korean authorities into alleged submarine technology leaks to Taiwan has sparked a spat between lawmakers of Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and main opposition Kuomintang (KMT).

Several South Korean and international news outlets on Friday reported that two former employees at Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (now Hanhua Ocean) had been charged by the South Korean National Police Agency for allegedly stealing the blueprint of the Daewoo DSME1400 submarine and passing it to Taiwan.

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) introduced Taiwan's first indigenous defense submarine (IDS), the Narwhal, at a CSBC shipyard in the southern port city of Kaohsiung in September last year.

Shortly after news about the indictments broke, KMT Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) demanded that the Defense Ministry promptly investigate whether any Taiwanese nationals were involved in the alleged technology leaks.

If the news was true, the IDS program approved under former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and carried out by the Tsai administration would be a "major international scandal," the lawmaker said.

She called on the ministry to determine if the IDS project contractor CSBC Corp was responsible for any wrongdoing in this case.

Meanwhile, DPP Legislator Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) cited the report published by the Korea Economic Daily on Friday, which said that the South Korean authorities acted on a tip-off by a Taiwanese lawmaker, which Hung linked to Ma Wen-chun.

Ma Wen-chun's office previously confirmed that Ma had delivered an audio recording that was allegedly of a discussion between then Republic of China (Taiwan) Navy consultant Kuo Hsi (郭璽) and a South Korean engineer to the Korean Mission in Taipei, asking the South Korean authorities to investigate the matter.

Ma said she reported the issue to South Korean authorities because she believed that some of the practices adopted by Kuo in his dealings with the South Korean engineer constituted fraud against Taiwan's government.

Hung said Taiwan could not obtain core technologies for producing weapons from overseas because China had been dissuading other countries from sharing those technologies with Taiwan.

This forced Taiwan to pull out all of the stops to obtain the technologies, but Ma Wen-chun seemed to have taken China's side and acted against Taiwan's national interests, Hung said, citing motions filed by Ma at the legislature from 2016 to 2023 that sought to freeze a total of NT$9.8 billion (US$316 million) and slash NT$7.5 billion in funding for the IDS program.

Ma and Kuo have accused each other of leaking confidential information.

The Taiwan High Prosecutors Office is looking into allegations of treason made against the two.

(By Wang Yang-yu, Lin Chiao-lien and Sean Lin)

Enditem/cs