Taiwan asks South Korea for help over Chinese ship after submarine cable damaged

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Taiwan has asked South Korea for help in investigating a Chinese vessel suspected of cutting an undersea cable off the northern coast on Friday.

Taiwan telecommunications operator Chunghwa Telecom and the Taiwan Coast Guard said on Saturday that the cargo ship Shunxing39 is believed to have caused damage to a telecommunications line – near the port of Keelung on Taiwan’s northern coast – on the morning of January 3rd.

This follows incidents in which Chinese ships were targeted by fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea. they are cut off last in November with gas pipe and cable they are damaged there in October 2023.

The latest incident highlights the fragility of critical maritime links and energy infrastructure and the difficulties of claiming damages.

While the ship was sailing under the flag of Cameroon, Taiwanese officials said it belonged to Jie Yang Trading Limited. The sole director of the company registered in Hong Kong is Guo Wenjie, a Chinese national.

Chunghwa Telecom said that data connections were immediately restored by rerouting data to other submarine cables.

But Taipei worries that China could secretly cut off Taiwan’s foreign communications in any possible attempt to take over the country. Beijing claims sovereignty over the island and has threatened to seize it by force if necessary.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Chunghwa Telecom and Taiwanese government officials told the Financial Times that the damaged cable is part of the Trans-Pacific Express Cable System. The undersea cable that connects Taiwan to the US west coast is owned by an international corporation. Along with Chunghwa, it includes US operator AT&T, Japan’s NTT, Korea Telecom and operators China Telecom and China Unicom.

“Since it was not possible for us to question the captain of the ship, we asked the South Korean authorities to help us with the investigation at the next port of destination of the ship,” a Taiwan Coast official said. The guard said. Taiwan’s national security official said the ship was due to arrive in Pusan ​​in the next few days.

Taiwan’s coast guard and other government officials said tracking data from the ship’s navigation device and satellite data showed that the Shunxing39 had pulled its anchor from the area where the cable exploded.

Although a coast guard vessel conducted an external inspection of the vessel and established radio contact with the captain, authorities were unable to board it due to bad weather conditions , and it could not order its seizure for further investigation under international law, because there was too much time. has passed since the incident, officials said.

“This is another case of the world’s worrying trend of undersea cable damage,” said a senior Taiwanese national defense official. “The ships involved in these incidents are usually damaged ships with little business above board. This one, too, is in a very bad shape. It is similar to the ships that are part of Russia’s ‘shadow ships’,” he added.

According to ship tracking data seen by the FT, the Shunxing39 has been crossing floodwaters off Taiwan’s northern coast since at least December 8. The model showed that the damage to the cable was not an “innocent accident”, the official said.

Chinese commercial or fishing vessels have occasionally taken part in some of the largest military exercises that Beijing regularly conducts near Taiwan. Taipei is concerned that such a “greyzone” operation, which is below the threshold of war, will make it difficult to defend against aggression that could eventually escalate into a direct attack.

Additional reporting by Chan Ho-him and Cheng Leng in Hong Kong