BEIJING — China’s President Xi Jinping held talks on Monday with Vietnam’s new leader To Lam in Beijing on his first state visit since he took office, Chinese official media Xinhua said.

The meeting signals the close ties between the two communist-run neighbors, which have well-developed economic and trade relations despite the occasional boundary clashes in the energy-rich South China Sea.

China, displaying exuberance over Lam’s choosing China for his first official trip, said last week it “fully reflects the great importance he attaches to the development of ties between both parties and countries.”

Lam arrived in China’s southern province Guangzhou on Sunday for a three-day visit that would include meetings with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and other Chinese top officials.

While in Guangzhou, he visited some Chinese locations where former President Ho Chi Minh conducted revolutionary activities.

Last December, China and Vietnam signed more than a dozen agreements when Xi visited Vietnam.

The agreements, specifics of which were not announced, covered strengthening railway cooperation and development, investments in various fields and establishing communication to handle unexpected incidents in the South China Sea.

In a lengthy joint declaration, both countries said they would work on cross-border railway connectivity, naming three rail projects that included one connecting through mountainous Lao Cai in Vietnam’s northwest to the port city Haiphong and a potential one linking two coastal cities to Haiphong.

The statement mentioned continued support for both countries’ railway companies to further cooperate to improve the efficiency of Vietnamese goods transiting through China.

It also mentioned working on other projects under China’s flagship infrastructure program, the Belt and Road Initiative, and emphasized investment cooperation in agriculture, infrastructure, energy, digital economy, green development and other fields.

China and Vietnam forged diplomatic ties in 1950 and established a comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation in 2008 that was jointly fortified five years later to extend to more shared international and regional issues of concern.
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Seoul, South Korea — North Korea condemned Ukraine’s incursion into Russia as an unforgivable act of terror backed by Washington and the West, adding it would always stand with Russia as it seeks to protect its sovereignty, state media said Sunday.

Ukraine’s drive into Russia is a product of the anti-Russia confrontational policy of the United States, which is pushing the situation to the brink of World War III, KCNA news agency said.

The U.S. handed “astronomical” sums of lethal weapons to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the report said.

“We strongly condemn the armed attack against the Russian territory by the Zelenskyy puppet regime under the control and support of the United States and the West as an unforgivable act of aggression and terror,” North Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement, according to KCNA.

North Korea has dramatically upgraded its ties with Russia in the past year with two summit meetings by their leaders who pledged closer cooperation in all areas.

In June, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a pact in Pyongyang on a “comprehensive strategic partnership” that included a mutual defense agreement.

South Korea, Ukraine and the United States have accused North Korea of supplying artillery and missiles to Russia for use in its unprovoked war against Ukraine. North Korea and Russia have denied the allegations. 
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BANGKOK — Leaders of Thailand’s newest pro-democracy party are under an ethics investigation that could see them cast out of the National Assembly over allegations echoing those that saw the party’s predecessor dissolved by court order earlier this month.

Thailand’s National Anti-Corruption Commission said August 8 it had ordered a probe of 44 opposition members of the parliament accused of breaking the ethics rules for lawmakers for having sponsored a 2021 bill, which failed, to amend the country’s controversial royal defamation, or lèse-majesté, law.

The announcement came a day after the Constitutional Court dissolved the progressive Move Forward Party, which won last year’s national election, for campaigning to soften the law, which prescribes up to 15 years in jail for each offense.

The court said the party’s efforts posed a threat to national security, and followed on from its January ruling that the campaign was a veiled attempt to upend Thailand’s constitutional monarchy governmental structure, a claim the party denied.

All 44 lawmakers now under investigation by the anti-corruption commission were Move Forward members. Five were banned from public office for 10 years in the August 7 ruling that dissolved the party. The other 39 have since joined the People’s Party, set up in the wake of Move Forward’s dissolution to take its place, and include its new leader, Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut.

If the commission concludes the 39 did breach the ethics rules, it would then send the case to the Supreme Court, which could ban them from public office as well.

Analysts told VOA the previous court rulings on Move Forward’s campaign to amend the royal defamation law laid the groundwork for their possible convictions.

“The Constitutional Court has essentially delivered a verdict that could serve as a catalyst for upcoming verdicts against these 44 MPs,” said Napon Jatusripitak, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute.

The Supreme Court may follow different procedures than the Constitutional Court and decide to call its own witnesses, he said.

“But it would be quite an interesting outcome if the Supreme Court ruled in a way that contradicts the Constitutional Court’s verdict, given that the Constitutional Court is treated as the highest court in Thailand,” he added.

Verapat Pariyawong, who teaches Thai law and politics at SOAS University of London, also pointed to the precedent set by even earlier court verdicts that banned leaders of Future Forward, a progressive party that was dissolved by court order in 2020 and then gave rise to Move Forward.

He said the case of Pannika Wanich was especially relevant. Pannika, a lawmaker for each party in turn, was banned from public office for life by the Supreme Court last year for breaking ethics rules by posting a photo online in 2010 deemed to disparage the monarchy.

“The MPs in this [new] case, they didn’t make remarks in the same way that Pannika did. But they sponsored or they agreed to support the draft legislation [to amend the royal defamation law] directly or tacitly. And if the court follows the interpretation in Pannika’s case, they could expand the scope of the law to cover those MPs and therefore ban them,” Verapat said.

Officially, Thailand’s constitutional monarchy is meant to stay out of politics. However, the country’s recent string of progressive parties, and much of their base, say it has long wielded outsized influence over the government in favor of Thailand’s military and conservative elites.

They accuse those forces of weaponizing the royal defamation law to persecute parties, lawmakers and activists seeking to rein them in and move Thailand toward a more genuine democracy.

Since 2020, Thailand’s courts have charged 272 people with breaking the royal defamation law, according to Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, a local advocacy group.

Move Forward made amending the law, to limit who could file related court cases and lower the maximum jail term allowed, a central plank of the reform agenda that helped it win last year’s general election. Despite that win, conservative lawmakers blocked the party from winning a vote in the National Assembly for prime minister, shunting it into opposition.

Party supporters see the courts and commissions as doing the military and conservative elite’s bidding as well, and the broad language of some laws and rules as helping them do it.

The ethics rules the 39 People’s Party lawmakers are now accused of breaking say office holders must protect the country’s constitutional monarchy. The analysts, though, told VOA they give little counsel on what that means, leaving judges ample leeway.

“It’s open to interpretation, because … there is no clear definition about protection of the monarchy,” said Titipol Phakdeewanich, a political scientist at Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani University.

“And when we talk about interpretation, it always means that if you are the target of the elite or the establishment then they could find anything to [rule] against you,” he added.

The analysts said the People’s Party is also running the risk of being dissolved altogether, as were Future Forward and Move Forward before it, by carrying on their agenda of amending the royal defamation law.

The party did not reply to VOA’s requests for comment. At a news conference on Aug. 9, though, party leader Natthaphong said they would “not be careless” in going about it, in hopes of avoiding their predecessors’ fate.

Whatever the new party’s fate, the analysts say the monarchy, or how conservative elites are seen to be using the laws that protect it for their own ends, will remain a major fault line defining Thai politics and dividing the public.

“The issue of the monarchy has been used by those politicians who would like to ensure that they remain in power,” said Verapat. “It’s those people who rely on issues of lèse-majesté to attack parties like MFP or People’s [Party], so that dynamic will continue as long as … the Constitutional Court can rely on lèse-majesté to disband political parties.”

Napon said that may also portent more rocky politics ahead for a country that has seen 13 coups over the past century and several rounds of mass, sometimes violent, protests over the last two decades.

“The problem is that it’s not clear that political parties can represent these divides effectively in parliament or during election campaigns due to legal limits, because these topics are considered highly sensitive and some off limits by the Constitutional Court,” he said.

“It means parliament will be very inept in representing actual divides in society,” he added. “And that leaves people with grievances that could only be expressed through means of street protest, which we have seen before did not lead to meaningful results other than … more repression and jail time.”
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ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia — With its reindeer sleigh rides, camel racing and stunning landscapes with room to roam, Mongolia is hoping to woo visitors who are truly looking to get away from it all.

Like most countries, its tourism industry was devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has launched a “Welcome to MonGOlia” campaign to win people back. The government has added flights and streamlined the visa process, offering visa-free visits for many countries.

At least 437,000 foreign tourists visited in the first seven months of this year, up 25% over the same period last year, including increasing numbers from Europe, the U.S. and Japan. Visitors from South Korea nearly doubled, thanks in part to the under-four-hour flight.

Despite the gains, Mongolia’s government is still short of its goal of 1 million visitors per year from 2023-25 to the land of Genghis Khan, which encompassed much of Eurasia in its 13th-century heyday and is now a landlocked nation located between Russia and China.

With a population of 3.3 million people, about half of them living in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, there’s plenty of open space for the adventure tourist to explore, said Egjimaa Battsooj, who works for a tour company. Its customized itineraries include horseback trips and camping excursions with the possibility of staying in gers, the felt-covered dwellings still used by Mongolia’s herders.

There’s little chance of running across private property, so few places are off-limits, she said.

“You don’t need to open a gate, you don’t need to have permission from anyone,” she said, sitting in front of a map of Mongolia with routes marked out with pins and strands of yarn.

“We are kind of like the last truly nomad culture on the whole planet,” she added.

Lonely Planet named Mongolia its top destination in its Best in Travel 2024 report. The pope’s visit to Mongolia last year also helped focus attention on the country. Its breakdancers became stars at last year’s Asian Games. And some local bands have developed a global following, like The Hu, a folk-metal band that incorporates traditional Mongolian instruments and throat singing with modern rock.

Still, many people know little about Mongolia. American tourist Michael John said he knew some of the history about Genghis Khan and had seen a documentary on eagles used by hunters before deciding to stop in Ulaanbaatar as part of a longer vacation.

“It was a great opportunity to learn more,” the 40-year-old said.

Tourism accounted for 7.2% of Mongolia’s gross domestic product and 7.6% of its employment in 2019 before collapsing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the World Bank. But the organization noted “substantial growth potential” for Mongolia to exploit, with “diverse nature and stunning sceneries” and sports and adventure tourism possibilities.

Mongolia tourism ads focus on those themes, with beautiful views of frozen lakes in winter for skating and fishing, the Northern Lights and events like reindeer sledding and riding, camel racing and hiking.

Munkhjargal Dayan offers rides on two-humped Bactrian camels, traditional archery and the opportunity to have eagles trained for hunting perch on a visitor’s arm.

“We want to show tourists coming from other countries that we have such a way of life in Mongolia,” he said, waiting for customers by a giant statue of Genghis Kahn on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar.

Outside the lively capital, getting around can be difficult in summer as the steppes become waterlogged, and there is limited infrastructure, a shortage of accommodation and a deficit of skilled labor in tourism destinations.

It is also easy for foreigners to get lost, with few signs in English, said Dutch tourist Jasper Koning. Nevertheless, he said he was thoroughly enjoying his trip.

“The weather is super, the scenery is more than super, it’s clean, the people are friendly,” he said.
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Beijing, China — Youth unemployment in China ticked up to 17.1% in July, official figures showed, the highest level this year as the world’s second-largest economy faces mounting headwinds.

China is battling soaring joblessness among young people, a heavily indebted property sector and intensifying trade issues with the West.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang, who is responsible for economic policy, called Friday for struggling companies to be “heard” and “their difficulties truly addressed,” according to the state news agency Xinhua.

The unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-olds released Friday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) was up markedly from June’s 13.2%.

The closely watched metric peaked at 21.3% in June of 2023, before authorities suspended publication of the figures and later changed their methodology to exclude students.

Nearly 12 million students graduated from Chinese universities this June, heightening competition in an already tough job market and likely explaining July’s sharp increase in joblessness.

In May, President Xi Jinping said countering youth unemployment must be regarded as a “top priority.”

Disappointing data

Among 25- to 29-year-olds, the unemployment rate stood at 6.5% for July, up from the previous month’s 6.4%.

For China’s workforce, the national unemployment rate was 5.2%.

However, the NBS figures paint an incomplete picture of China’s overall employment situation, as they take only urban areas into account.

The new unemployment figures come on the heels of other disappointing economic data from Beijing, including figures showing dampened industrial production, despite recent government measures aimed at boosting growth.

Industrial production growth weakened in July, with the month’s 5.1% expansion down from June’s 5.3% and falling short of analysts’ predictions.

China’s major cities also recorded another decline in real estate prices last month, a sign of sluggish demand.

Demand for bank loans also contracted for the first time in nearly 20 years, according to official figures published earlier this week.

International challenges are also mounting, with the European Union and the United States increasingly imposing trade barriers to protect their markets from low-cost Chinese products and perceived unfair competition.
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Helsinki, Finland — Western officials and analysts are suspicious of Beijing’s admission this week that a Chinese container ship damaged the Balticconnector — a vital Baltic Sea gas pipeline linking Estonia and Finland — in October.

The South China Morning Post reported August 12 that the Chinese government notified Finland and Estonia 10 months after the incident that it was caused by a Hong Kong-registered ship called Newnew Polar Bear, but blamed a storm for what it called the accident.

In an interview August 13 with Estonia’s public radio, ERR, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said he was skeptical of China’s claim that a storm caused the incident.

“Personally, I find it very difficult to understand how a ship’s captain could fail to notice for such a long time that its anchor had been dragging along the seabed, but it is up to the prosecutor’s office to complete the investigation,” he said.

Markku Mylly, the former director of the European Maritime Safety Agency, told local media in Helsinki there were no storms in the Gulf of Finland at the time. The Finnish newspaper Iltalehti consulted data from the Finland Meteorological Institute and confirmed that Mylly’s memory was correct.

Pevkur told ERR that Estonia would not give up claims against China for compensation.

The Baltic Sea oil and gas pipeline, which was built with EU assistance, was commissioned in 2019 at a total cost of around $331 million, to wean Finland and the three Baltic countries — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — off their dependence on Russia for natural gas.

The pipeline was the source of almost all of Estonia’s natural gas supply after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine sparked European restrictions on the import of Russian gas.  After the damage, Estonia had to temporarily rely on Latvia for natural gas.

The pipeline was reopened for commercial operations in April after repairs that cost about $38 million, a senior vice president at Gasgrid Finland told The Associated Press. A few telecoms cables were also damaged in the incident.

Finnish and Estonian investigative agencies recovered the ship’s 6-ton anchor from the sea floor near the damaged pipeline after the incident and tracked it to the ship, which they tried to contact; it refused to respond.

The damage occurred at a time of heightened tension between Europe and Russia over sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, and critics suspected it was a deliberate act of sabotage by Russia or its ally China.

After the damage to the pipeline, the Newnew Polar Bear first sailed to St. Petersburg and Arkhangelsk in Russia and later docked in China’s port of Tianjin. 

Eoin Micheal McNamara, a global security expert at the Finland Institute of International Affairs, told VOA that Finnish people doubt Beijing’s claim that the ship’s damage to the pipeline was an accident.

“Undersea infrastructure elsewhere in the wider Nordic-Baltic region has also been damaged by ‘manmade activity’ in recent years. There was the Nord Stream sabotage in 2022 and the severing of a data cable between Norway and its Arctic island of Svalbard before that,” McNamara said. “As geopolitical tensions rise, more targeted sabotage is being expected.”

German media reported this week that investigators asked Poland to arrest a Ukrainian diving instructor for allegedly being part of a team that blew up the Baltic Sea’s Nord Stream gas pipelines, which supplied Russian gas to Europe. Russia blamed Britain, Ukraine and the United States for the sabotage, which they denied.

McNamara said there are suspicions that Russia was involved in the damage to the Balticconnector pipeline. “Plausible deniability is a key tenet for hybrid interference. There are suspicions that use of a Hong Kong-registered vessel was a tactic to gain this plausible deniability,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last year dismissed the idea that Russia could have been behind an attack on the pipeline as “rubbish.”

Estonia and Finland are still jointly investigating the ship, which China’s NewNew Shipping Company owns.

The Estonian prosecutor’s office, which oversees the investigation, said under international law, China’s statement acknowledging the ship caused the damage as an “accident” cannot be used as evidence in a criminal investigation because China has not invited Estonian criminal investigators to participate in Beijing’s own investigation.

VOA contacted the Chinese Foreign Ministry about the matter but was referred to the Chinese shipping departments.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian at a news briefing on August 13 said, “China is advancing the investigation in accordance with the facts and the law and is in close communication with relevant countries. It is hoped that all parties will continue to promote the investigation in a professional, objective and cooperative manner, and jointly ensure that the incident is handled in a sound manner.”

Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen told VOA in an email, “We are constantly cooperating with China and exchanging information regarding this matter, but we will not go into details because the investigation is still ongoing.”

The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, or NBI, which is investigating the case, told VOA that the Finnish and Estonian authorities have been cooperating with the Chinese authorities on the matter. The NBI said it will publish the findings with the Estonian side as early as this fall.

“Based on the evidence collected and information analyzed during the investigation, it can be stated that the course of events is considered clear and there are sufficient reasons to suspect that the container vessel Newnew Polar Bear is linked to the damages. The cause for the damages seems to be the anchor and anchor chain [struck] the mentioned vessel.”

The NBI added, “It must be stated that the investigation is still ongoing and final conclusions, what was behind these incidents (technical failure — negligence, poor seamanship — deliberate act), can be made only after all necessary investigative measures have been finalized, and this will still take some time.”

VOA’s Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report. Some information was provided by Reuters.
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BANGKOK — Southeast Asia is among the regions most prone to natural disasters, but a new analysis released Thursday shows its people also feel the best equipped to deal with them.

It seems logical that the countries in and around the Pacific Ring of Fire, vulnerable to earthquakes, typhoons, storm surges and other dangers, are also the best prepared, but the survey by Gallup for the Lloyd’s Register Foundation shows that’s not always the case in other regions.

“Frequent exposure to hazard isn’t the only factor that determines how prepared people feel,” Benedict Vigers, a research consultant with Gallup, told The Associated Press.

The report found the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has played a key role in disaster risk reduction, and Vigers said the region’s wider approach includes widespread and effective early warning systems, scaled-up community approaches and regional cooperation, and good access to disaster finance.

“Southeast Asia’s success in feelings of disaster preparedness can be linked to its high exposure to disasters, its relatively high levels of resilience – from individual people to overall society, and the region’s approach to — and investment into — disaster risk management more broadly,” he said.

Forty percent of people surveyed in Southeast Asia said they had experienced a natural disaster in the past five years, while a similar number — 36% — in Southern Asia said the same. But 67% of Southeast Asians felt among the best prepared to protect their families and 62% had emergency plans, while Southern Asians felt less ready, with 49% and 29% respectively.

Respondents from North America, which is significantly less disaster-prone than Southeast Asia, said they only felt slightly less prepared, while those in Northern and Western Europe were in the middle of the pack.

The results from Southeast Asia, primarily made up of lower-middle-income countries, suggest wealth is not a deciding factor in disaster response and preparation, said Ed Morrow, senior campaigns manager for Lloyd’s Register Foundation, a British-based global safety charity.

Southeast Asia is “a region that clearly has much to teach the world in terms of preparing for disasters,” he said.

Globally, no country ranked higher than the Philippines for having experienced a natural disaster in the past five years, with 87% of respondents saying they had.

It was also among the top four countries where the highest proportion of households have a disaster plan. All were in Southeast Asia: the Philippines (84%), Vietnam (83%), Cambodia (82%) and Thailand (67%), followed by the United States (62%).

Those with the lowest proportion were Egypt, Kosovo and Tunisia, all with 7%.

The data were drawn from the World Risk Poll, conducted every two years, with the main results from the 2023 survey published in June. Questions on disasters focused on natural hazards instead of conflicts or financial disasters, and they excluded the coronavirus pandemic.

Surveys were conducted of people aged 15 and above in 142 countries and based on telephone or face-to-face conversations with approximately 1,000 or more respondents in each country with the exception of China, where some 2,200 people were contacted online.

Margin of error ranged from plus or minus 2.2 to 4.9 percentage points, for an overall 95% confidence level.

“It is our intention that this freely available data should be used by governments, regulators, businesses, NGOs and international bodies to inform and target policies and interventions that make people safer,” Morrow said.
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washington — South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s freedom-based approach toward unifying the two Koreas could chart a bold path signaling a departure from the policies of his predecessors, experts in Washington said. 

 

In a speech commemorating South Korea’s Liberation Day on Thursday, Yoon introduced the “August 15 Doctrine,” his vision for achieving a “freedom-based unification” of the Korean Peninsula.

Made up of incremental strategies, the doctrine seeks a dialogue between South and North but puts much weight on addressing the North Korean human rights issue.

“Testimonials from numerous North Korean defectors show that our radio and TV broadcasts helped make them aware of the false propaganda and instigations emanating from the North Korean regime,” Yoon said during his speech.

The seven key steps under the doctrine include expanding North Koreans’ rights to access information, supporting endeavors to inform the international community of North Korea’s human rights situation, incorporating the roles of North Korean defectors into unification efforts, and providing humanitarian aid to North Korea.

Accent on rights

Sung-Yoon Lee, a fellow with the Wilson Center’s Indo-Pacific Program, said Yoon broke from the South Korean presidents before him by accentuating North Koreans’ human rights.

“None of his predecessors made the explicit connection between freedom for all North Koreans and final liberation of the Korean Peninsula,” Lee told VOA Korean on Thursday via email.

Lee said Yoon was “boldly emphasizing North Korea human rights and the protection of the right to speech and information of North Koreans, while seeking talks” with Pyongyang.

Evans Revere, who served as acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, agreed that North Korean human rights were at the core of the Yoon doctrine.

“Seoul is clearly planning to make these ideas the centerpiece of its approach to North Korea going forward,” Revere told VOA Korean on Thursday via email.

Revere said that the new approach has “the potential to create schisms” inside North Korea and accelerate the process of political and social change if South Korea is “successful in delivering this message to the people of North Korea through its radio and television broadcasts and by other means.”

Andrew Yeo, the SK-Korea Foundation chair at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Asia Policy Studies, said that Yoon was intently focused on the notion of freedom of people on the Korean Peninsula, noting that the words “free” or “freedom” appear over 50 times in his speech.

“I don’t see this as contradictory to reinforcing the idea of freedom-based unification,” Yeo told VOA Korean on Thursday via email.

Strong protest

Yeo, however, expressed skepticism about how the North Korean regime will respond to Yoon’s proposal.

“The call to establish an inter-Korean working group to discuss people-to-people cooperation and humanitarian engagement will ring hollow to Kim Jong Un given the Yoon government’s emphasis on freedom before unification,” he said.

Revere said he was “highly pessimistic” that Pyongyang will react well to the proposal.

Revere explained that words such as “freedom” and “democracy,” which are highlighted in the new unification vision, are “anathema to the DPRK, as is the idea that the ROK intends to boost its efforts to get information to the North Korean people.”

DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name, while ROK is an abbreviation of South Korea’s official name, Republic of Korea.

Robert Rapson, who served as chargé d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, cautioned that Yoon’s vision could result in the escalation of tension.

“If anything, it is bound to elicit sharp negative reactions in Pyongyang, and likely in Beijing, too, and lead to a heightening of tensions along the DMZ and across the peninsula,” he told VOA Korean on Thursday via email.

The United States voiced support for Yoon’s proposal.

“The long-standing, ironclad alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea has contributed to peace, security and prosperity for Northeast Asia, the broader Indo-Pacific and beyond,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA Korean on Friday via email.

“We support President Yoon’s aim to open a path for serious and sustained diplomacy with the DPRK,” the spokesperson said, adding that “we are committed to working with allies and partners to promote human rights, accountability and access to information in the DPRK.”

China, North Korea’s closest strategic partner, took a more reserved view.

“DPRK and ROK are the main parties to the Korean Peninsula issue, which should ultimately be resolved through dialogue and cooperation,” a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington told VOA Korean on Friday in an emailed statement.

“China supports all measures that are conducive to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” the spokesperson said. “We sincerely hope that the North-South relations will continue to improve and that the Korean Peninsula will maintain peace and stability.”

North Korea has not responded to Yoon’s speech on its major state media outlets.
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BEIJING — China urged neighboring countries to help war-torn Myanmar advance its peace and reconciliation process as its foreign minister met counterparts from Laos, Myanmar and Thailand on Friday. 

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi called the situation in Myanmar “worrying,” and he suggested neighboring countries should promote cooperation with Myanmar to help it create economic and social conditions that prevent conflict. 

Earlier, Wang told a news conference in Thailand that China supports a democratic transition in Myanmar and backs a regional plan to find a way out of the ongoing crisis in the Southeast Asian country. 

Wang said neighboring countries “sitting in the same boat, and drinking water from the same river” have a better understanding of Myanmar’s situation than others. 

Myanmar has been in turmoil since February 2021 when the military ousted an elected civilian government in a coup, abruptly ending the impoverished country’s tentative steps toward becoming a full-fledged democracy. 

“No one wants Myanmar to restore stability and development more than its neighbors,” Wang said.
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washington — As North Korean leader Kim Jong Un struggles to cope with devastating floods in his country, his recent brash words have exposed his fear of South Korean influence over his people, analysts in Seoul said.

During a visit to a flood-stricken area last week, Kim slammed South Korean news reports about the flooding, claiming media outlets were producing fake news stories about the damage and death toll.

Kim accused the South Korean media of spreading false rumors, calling news reports “conspiracy propaganda” and “blasphemy” from “the country of waste.” The South’s media had reported that an estimated 1,500 people were dead or missing after the flooding, citing unnamed South Korean government officials.

While Kim often engages in bellicose rhetoric, his direct criticism of South Korean media stood out as rare. His sister, Kim Yo Jong, has often taken the role of verbally attacking the country’s southern neighbor.

Anxiety over outside influence

Some analysts said Kim’s denunciation of the South Korean media was spurred by his anxiety over North Koreans’ greater access to outside information.

Cho Han-bum, a senior research fellow at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, told VOA Korean on Tuesday that thanks to modern technology, North Korean people receive information from the outside world more easily today.

According to Cho, there are around 34,000 North Korean defectors in South Korea these days. This is a 23.6% increase from the end of 2014, when there were 27,500, data from South Korea’s Unification Ministry show.

“Many of them manage to talk frequently with their families in North Korea over the phone,” Cho said. “The information from South Korea tends to spread faster through the intranet within North Korea, even though the internet connected to the outside world is blocked.”

North Korean authorities are having more difficulty controlling the flow of information now than they did in the past, Cho added.

Nam Sung-wook, professor of North Korean studies at Korea University in Seoul, said the reopening of the North’s border with China in the post-COVID-19 era has allowed more information to enter what is often called the “Hermit Kingdom.”

“Those who live near the Chinese border area should be able to get hold of the foreign news,” Nam told VOA Korean in a phone call Tuesday. “They must be upset to find out the regime’s incapability in dealing with the disaster, and the regime, on the other hand, is trying to contain such dissatisfaction.”

South Korea has always been an easy target for the North Korean regime to frame as a source of fake news, Nam said. North Korea would be hesitant to blame China, its longtime benefactor, he said, although it is likely that some North Koreans have heard from the Chinese side across the border along the Yalu River about the flooding, which has affected both countries.

Cha Doo-hyun, a researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said Kim might fear that his incompetence would be highlighted if he accepted support from South Korea, which made an offer earlier this month that Kim rejected.

“For Kim, the news reports of the offers from other countries only underscore that the Kim regime doesn’t have enough capacity to handle the situation,” Cha told VOA Korean on the phone Tuesday. “And that is what makes Kim Jong Un respond to the South Korean media even more defiantly.”

Refusal of aid

In his speech last week, Kim also stressed that North Korea would “pioneer its own path with its own strength and effort,” while admitting that several countries and international institutions had offered to help the North.

Kim’s remarks suggested that the regime would refuse to accept any support from outside.

Lim Eul-chul, associate professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Changwon, South Korea, told VOA Korean on the phone Tuesday that Kim is trying to discredit the South Korean media.

“Kim Jong Un has already defined a new relationship with South Korea and is seeking an internal unity while escalating animosity toward the South,” Lim said. “He cannot receive the humanitarian aid proposed by South Korea in this situation, so I think Kim is using this South Korean media report as an excuse to lower expectations about the humanitarian aid that South Korea was willing to provide.”

Lim added that Kim is exploiting the natural disaster to more broadly limit South Korean influence among North Korean people.

The South Korean government interpreted Kim’s remarks about its nation’s news media as his attempt to “minimize public sentiment turning against the regime” by pointing fingers outward.

North Korea is “shifting the subject of criticism to the outside,” Koo Byoung-sam, a spokesperson at South Korea’s Unification Ministry, told a press briefing earlier this month.
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Bangkok — Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the heir of Thailand’s most powerful political dynasty, is tipped to become the kingdom’s youngest leader in a parliament vote on Friday after a top court ousted a prime minister this week. 

Her Pheu Thai party selected the 37-year-old to be its candidate in the vote to replace Srettha Thavisin, who was dismissed on Wednesday for appointing a cabinet minister with a criminal conviction. 

Srettha’s ouster threw Thailand into fresh political turmoil, fueled by a long-running battle between the military, pro-royalist establishment and parties linked to Paetongtarn’s father, one-time Manchester City owner Thaksin Shinawatra. 

If she is voted in, Paetongtarn will become the youngest leader in Thailand’s history as a constitutional monarchy and the third of the Shinawatra name after her billionaire father and aunt Yingluck Shinawatra. 

She must secure 247 votes from the 493 members currently sitting in parliament to win.

“We are confident that the party and coalition parties will lead our country in helping with Thailand’s economic crisis,” she said after her candidacy was announced on Thursday. 

A political newcomer, Paetongtarn helped run the hotel arm of the ultra-rich family’s business empire before joining politics three years ago. 

She was a near-constant presence on the campaign trail in last year’s election amid searing heat despite being heavily pregnant. 

That vote ultimately saw Srettha take power in alliance with pro-military parties previously staunchly opposed to Thaksin and his followers. 

The timing seemed to suggest a truce in the long-standing feud as both sides sought to see off the threat posed by the newer Move Forward Party (MFP), which won the popular vote. 

Pheu Thai members voted overwhelmingly in October 2023 for Paetongtarn to become party leader and vowed to rejuvenate its image. 

During the Srettha government, she chaired the national soft power committee to push Thailand abroad.

Paetongtarn, known in Thailand by her nickname Ung Ing, is the youngest child of Thaksin, a policeman turned telecoms tycoon who won two elections in the early 2000s before being ousted in a coup in 2006. 

She grew up in Bangkok and studied hotel management in Britain, then married commercial pilot Pidok Sooksawas in 2019 with two glitzy receptions in the Thai capital and Hong Kong. The couple now have two children. 

Paetongtarn shares her jet-setting lifestyle with almost a million followers on Instagram, and her youth and energy stand out in a political scene dominated by strait-laced elderly men. 

She was chosen ahead of Pheu Thai stalwart Chaikasem Nitisiri, 75. 

The move showed “Pheu Thai’s strategy to stand by the youth movement,” political analyst Yuttaporn Issarachai told AFP. 

But he said it would be difficult to “move on from the conservative and military influence” that has dominated Thai politics for decades. 

Paetongtarn will hope to avoid the fate of her father and aunt — Yingluck was ousted by a military coup in 2014. Her uncle was also kicked out of office by a court ruling.
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