S Korea spy agency sees chance of Trump-Kim summit

South Korea’s intelligence agency sees signs that the US and North Korea might be moving toward renewed dialogue and assesses that a summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un could take place “at any time,” a South Korean lawmaker briefed by the agency said yesterday.

“While contact between the US and North Korea has not been verified, there have been signs of dialogue,” ruling Democratic Party lawmaker Youn Kun-young told reporters after a closed-door parliamentary briefing by the South Korean National Intelligence Service.

The assessment adds to recent speculation that Trump is seeking to revive the personal diplomacy with Kim that defined his first term, despite Pyongyang publicly rebuffing recent US overtures and tensions persisting over military exercises and North Korea’s nuclear program.

Last month Trump abruptly ordered the Pentagon to scale back annual joint military drills with South Korea, citing his relationship with Kim and calling the drills costly and unnecessarily hostile.

Trump described his interaction with Kim as “very positive” without providing details.

South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Hyun told US Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week that Seoul would work to ensure that Trump’s recent messages lead to renewed US-North Korea discussions and peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Still, Pyongyang has offered little public indication that it is ready to return to negotiations. North Korea dismissed Trump’s decision to scale back the US-South Korea exercises, saying the move did nothing to change what it considers Washington’s hostile policy.

It has also criticized plans for South Korea, the US and Japan to hold five days of trilateral military exercises beginning Monday next week.

Trump and Kim held three meetings during the US president’s first term, beginning with a landmark summit in Singapore in 2018, but the two sides failed to bridge differences over sanctions relief and North Korea’s nuclear program.

China deployed a record number of coast guard, scientific research and other ships near Taiwan’s waters last month, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said, as Beijing dials up pressure on Taipei. The coast guard warned of an increasingly severe situation, as analysts say the increased activity is part of China’s bid to map the region for submarine warfare. The number of Chinese ships detected around Taiwan proper soared to a record 244 last month — an average of nearly eight every day, official data showed.

That compares with 55 ships detected in June and 30 in May, and 58 in July last year. In

The Hualien District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday launched an investigation following allegations by a former foreign correspondent in Taiwan of widespread vote-buying in Hualien County. In an interview with Formosa TV (FTV, 民視) aired on Saturday, former Financial Times Taiwan correspondent Kathrin Hille spoke about Taiwan’s democracy and said that she now lives in rural Hualien, where “all the votes are bought.” Neighbors would talk about who had come by and leave cash on the table showing “how much each vote was worth that year,” Hille said.

The practice needs to be addressed, considering Taiwan has been a democracy for many

Taiwan is bracing for heavy rain in the south and rough seas around outlying Lienchiang County (Matsu), as Typhoon Saudel passes north toward eastern China, with forecasters yesterday warning of localized flooding over the next two days. Saudel is expected to pass closest to Taiwan today, when its outer rain bands are forecast to brush past Matsu, before making landfall at about noon in China’s Zhejiang Province and weakening significantly, the Central Weather Administration said.

The storm’s outer bands, combined with strengthening southwesterly winds, are expected to bring heavy rain to southern and southeastern Taiwan today, it said. As the storm approaches Matsu,

LIMITED: The bill’s NT$40bn annual spending cap would prevent Taiwan from effectively building up its drone combat capabilities, National Defense Minister Wellington Koo said The legislature yesterday rejected the Executive Yuan’s NT$210 billion (US$6.62 billion) special budget proposal to buy military drones and instead passed its own plan, which earmarks NT$40 billion per year over six consecutive years. The Executive Yuan said its plan to buy about 210,000 drones by 2031 could not wait, as the wars in Ukraine and Iran showed the importance of uncrewed systems in modern warfare amid a rising threat from China.

However, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their opposition majority to pass a bill providing NT$240 billion through annual budgets over six years, with annual