Discrimination dating back decades has often meant Chinese Muslims living in Indonesia have had a difficult time blending in with others of their faith. Several mosques in the country now aim to bridge that gap, as VOA’s Ahadian Utama reports. VOA footage by Gregorius Giovanni.
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Seoul, South Korea — A much-heralded first meeting between South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and a negotiator for young doctors who walked off the job in February appeared to have made little progress on Thursday after the latter expressed pessimism on social media.  

Yoon’s office said his first in-person talks lasted more than two hours, after he showed the first signs of flexibility in an approach until now marked by a hard-line attitude, as crucial parliament elections approach next week.

“There is no future for medical care in Korea,” the negotiator, Park Dan, posted on his Facebook page after the meeting at which Yoon’s office said the two exchanged views on improving working conditions and compensation for the doctors.

It was not immediately clear what aspect of the talks Park was referring to. Reuters has sent him a text message to seek comment.  

The long drawn-out walkout by thousands of trainee doctors nationwide is putting increasing strain on South Korea’s health care system, forcing hospitals to turn away patients and cut back on surgeries except in emergencies.

Park, the head of the Korean Intern Resident Association, accepted Yoon’s invitation to meet and conveyed the views of his colleagues, Yoon’s office said in its brief statement.

It added that Yoon would respect the position of the trainee doctors in future discussions with the medical community on health care reform, including an increase in physician numbers.

The centerpiece of Yoon’s contested plan is to boost medical school admissions and the number of doctors in a rapidly aging society, but many are instead concerned about securing better working conditions and legal protection.

Unless action is taken, South Korea faces having 15,000 fewer doctors than it needs to maintain essential services, the government has warned.

Yoon had said his plan to raise the number of new medical students to 5,000 a year from 3,000 now is not up for discussion but signaled on Monday there might be room to adjust it if the medical community offered reasonable proposals.  

South Korea’s practicing physicians and teachers in medical school have demanded that Yoon scrap his reform plans.  

While a large majority of the public support the thrust of Yoon’s plan, a poll on Monday showed more people are unhappy with the way his government has handled the stalemate.

South Koreans go to the polls on April 10 to elect a 300-member parliament and Yoon’s conservative People Power Party faces an uphill battle to win back a majority now held by the opposition.
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BOSTON — In a scathing indictment of Microsoft corporate security and transparency, a Biden administration-appointed review board issued a report Tuesday saying “a cascade of errors” by the tech giant let state-backed Chinese cyber operators break into email accounts of senior U.S. officials including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

The Cyber Safety Review Board, created in 2021 by executive order, describes shoddy cybersecurity practices, a lax corporate culture and a lack of sincerity about the company’s knowledge of the targeted breach, which affected multiple U.S. agencies that deal with China.

It concluded that “Microsoft’s security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul” given the company’s ubiquity and critical role in the global technology ecosystem. Microsoft products “underpin essential services that support national security, the foundations of our economy, and public health and safety.”

The panel said the intrusion, discovered in June by the State Department and dating to May, “was preventable and should never have occurred,” and it blamed its success on “a cascade of avoidable errors.” What’s more, the board said, Microsoft still doesn’t know how the hackers got in.

The panel made sweeping recommendations, including urging Microsoft to put on hold adding features to its cloud computing environment until “substantial security improvements have been made.”

It said Microsoft’s CEO and board should institute “rapid cultural change,” including publicly sharing “a plan with specific timelines to make fundamental, security-focused reforms across the company and its full suite of products.”

In a statement, Microsoft said it appreciated the board’s investigation and would “continue to harden all our systems against attack and implement even more robust sensors and logs to help us detect and repel the cyber-armies of our adversaries.”

In all, the state-backed Chinese hackers broke into the Microsoft Exchange Online email of 22 organizations and more than 500 individuals around the world — including the U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns — accessing some cloud-based email boxes for at least six weeks and downloading some 60,000 emails from the State Department alone, the 34-page report said. Three think tanks and foreign government entities, including a number of British organizations, were among those compromised, it said.

The board, convened by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in August, accused Microsoft of making inaccurate public statements about the incident — including issuing a statement saying it believed it had determined the likely root cause of the intrusion “when, in fact, it still has not.” Microsoft did not update that misleading blog post, published in September, until mid-March, after the board repeatedly asked if it planned to issue a correction, it said.

Separately, the board expressed concern about a separate hack disclosed by the Redmond, Washington, company in January, this one of email accounts — including those of an undisclosed number of senior Microsoft executives and an undisclosed number of Microsoft customers — and attributed to state-backed Russian hackers.

The board lamented “a corporate culture that deprioritized both enterprise security investments and rigorous risk management.”

The Chinese hack was initially disclosed in July by Microsoft in a blog post and carried out by a group the company calls Storm-0558. That same group, the panel noted, has been engaged in similar intrusions — compromising cloud providers or stealing authentication keys so it can break into accounts — since at least 2009, targeting companies including Google, Yahoo, Adobe, Dow Chemical and Morgan Stanley.

Microsoft noted in its statement that the hackers involved are “well-resourced nation state threat actors who operate continuously and without meaningful deterrence.”

The company said that it recognized that recent events “have demonstrated a need to adopt a new culture of engineering security in our own networks,” and added that it had “mobilized our engineering teams to identify and mitigate legacy infrastructure, improve processes, and enforce security benchmarks.”
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tokyo — Japan is set to improve its strategic partnership with the Philippines at an upcoming trilateral meeting with the United States amid rising tensions between Beijing and Manila.

Leaders of the three countries, who will meet April 11 in Washington, are expected to discuss maritime security issues that are drawing Japan into a more robust military role in the Asia-Pacific region.

China used water cannons last month to disrupt a Philippine mission to resupply its garrison in a disputed portion of the South China Sea, an attack that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. called “illegal, coercive” and warranting countermeasures.

Despite its geographical distance from the South China Sea, Japan’s national interests lie in defending peace across the region, according to Alexander Vuving, professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies.

“From the Philippines’ perspective, Japan is Manila’s second most important partner in the South China Sea, second only to the United States, given Japan’s high commitment to keeping the sea free of Chinese dominance; Japan’s robust economic and military capabilities; and Japan’s proximity to the sea,” he told VOA.

Protecting regional dominance

Freedom of navigation in the maritime region is vital to Japan, which sees 90% of its energy and trade flow through the South China Sea. Japan relies heavily on importing crude oil from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, while one-fourth of the nation’s total trade in 2019 was from the European Union and members of ASEAN that also rely on the sea route.

Vuving added that Japan has changed its strategy from depending only on the U.S.-Japan military alliance to taking a more proactive role in defending its own national interests.

“The protection of the sea lines of communication that connect Japan with the rest of Afro-Eurasia is prominent in this vision because these maritime routes are some of the main arteries of Japan’s supply chains,” he said.

Ken Jimbo, a Keio University professor specializing in Japanese defense and security policy, said Japan is aiming to keep China’s maritime presence in check.

“Diplomatically, [keeping China in check] allows Japan to strengthen its position in the Indo-Pacific region, fostering closer security and defense cooperation with like-minded countries to counterbalance China’s assertiveness,” he told VOA.

Japan announced late last year that it was in talks with the Philippines for a defense pact known as a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) that would provide for enhanced security assistance.

“The negotiation of a Japan-Philippines RAA signifies a deepening military cooperation, aiming to elevate their defense relations,” Jimbo said. “Japan is considered a powerful ally for the Philippines, not just in terms of military equipment but also in enhancing interoperability and strategic alignment against common security challenges in the region.”

Early last year, the two countries signed terms of reference that simplified the process for Japanese forces to enter the Philippines for humanitarian assistance.

Further friction with China?

Japan’s siding with the Philippines and the U.S. has created friction in sometimes bumpy Sino-Japanese relations. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, urged Japan to “take actions that are beneficial to regional peace and stability,” state media CGTN reported in late March.

The sources of friction between the two countries range from anger over Japan’s use of sexual slavery during World War II to the release of wastewater from the disabled Fukushima nuclear power plant. There is also a long-standing dispute over islands in the East China Sea known as Diaoyu to China and Senkaku to Japan.

Jimbo said the trilateral summit in Washington could strain Sino-Japanese relations, but that the benefits outweigh the costs.

“It is a calculated move within Japan’s broader regional strategy,” he said. “The dynamics of Japan-China relations are complex, with economic interdependence coexisting with strategic rivalry, suggesting that both nations are accustomed to managing fluctuations in their relationship.”

Vuving said China is unlikely to react by raising tensions over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands.

“Such tensions would only strengthen Japan’s belief in seeking regional cooperation to deny Chinese regional dominance,” he said. “China may seek ways to hurt Japan economically, but for Japan, the trilateral cooperation … helps to redress the balance of power in the South China Sea in the long term … and would be immensely important if a conflict occurred over Taiwan.”

China is currently Japan’s largest trading partner, and one of the largest investment destinations for Japanese companies. Japan exports semiconductors and electronic parts to China and imports telecommunications and computer equipment from it, according to government data.

Experts say that after the trilateral meeting, Japan is expected to send its naval vessels to patrol with the U.S and the Philippines and will likely join military drills in the South China Sea. 
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