"Taiwan asks South Korea to cooperate in investigating Chinese cargo ships for 'cutting undersea cables'"

Taiwanese authorities have reportedly asked South Korea to cooperate in the investigation amid allegations that a Chinese cargo ship cut an undersea cable in northern Taiwan.

According to the British Financial Times (FT), an official of Taiwan's coast guard said, "It was impossible to interrogate the captain of a Chinese cargo ship, so we asked the Korean authorities to help us with the investigation."

The Chinese cargo ship in question is reportedly scheduled to arrive in Busan in a few days.

Earlier, Taiwanese news agency China Telecom (CHT) said on the 3rd that the undersea cable of the northern port of Jilin was damaged, and the Taiwan Coast Guard, who was dispatched after receiving a report, found a Cameroon-registered cargo ship called "Shunxing39" in the area of the accident.

The freighter is owned by a Hong Kong company, but Taiwanese officials said there was only one person from mainland China who was registered with the company.

The Taiwanese government analyzed information and satellite images on the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and believes that the cargo ship intentionally hung its anchor and cut the undersea cable connecting Taiwan and the US west coast.

The damaged cables are said to be part of an international consortium-owned Trans-Pacific Cable (TPE), which includes AT&T of the United States and NTT of Japan, KT of Korea, China Telecom of China and China Unicom of China.