By Ben Blanchard and Yimou Lee
TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan’s coast guard has said that it suspects a ship damaged an undersea communications cable over the weekend, but that bad weather prevented its personnel from boarding the vessel to investigate.
The coast guard had said on Saturday that a ship registered both to Cameroon and Tanzania was suspected of damaging an undersea communications cable northeast of the island.
Late Monday, the coast guard said that it had been unable to board the ship because of poor weather and that the vessel had continued to Busan, South Korea. They said that all seven crew were Chinese nationals and that the owner, which it did not name, was based in Hong Kong.
“Referencing incidents of undersea cables being damaged in the Baltic Sea in Europe last year, and judging from the historical tracks of the vessel, it is not possible to confirm its real intention,” the coast guard said, referring to incidents Baltic Sea nations have complained about since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has complained of repeated Chinese military activity in its environs, as well as operations such as balloon overflights and sand dredging.
It says such activities, which it calls “grey zone” tactics, are designed to put pressure on the island without direct confrontation.
A senior Taiwan security official told Reuters that Taipei has asked Seoul for help with the ship.
South Korea’s coast guard told Reuters that they had received a request from Taiwan for cooperation to check and confirm information about the vessel, but there had been no request for cooperation to investigate it.
“We plan to review the case if a formal request for cooperation is received through the Foreign Ministry but no decision has been made,” it said.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs said late Monday that communications had not been affected by the damage to the cable, which it expected to be repaired by Feb. 3.
In 2023, two undersea cables connecting the Taiwan-controlled Matsu islands, which sit close to the Chinese coast, were cut, disconnecting the 14,000 people who live there from the internet.
Authorities said at the time that their initial findings showed a Chinese fishing vessel and a Chinese freighter caused the disruption, but that there was no evidence Beijing deliberately tampered with the cables.
Taiwan has in recent years worked to build up its capacity to cope with emergencies, from disasters to military conflict, including alternative communications such as satellites if its international sea cables are cut off.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Yimou Lee; Additional reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul. Editing by Gerry Doyle and Christina Fincher)
