Taiwan seeks Korean help after latest suspicious cable cutTaiwan seeks Korean help after latest suspicious cable cut

The new year in subsea cables has begun the same way the old one ended – with a highly suspicious cable break. This time it is the Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) cable off the north Taiwan coast that has been severed.

Hours after the break occurred in the morning of January 3, Taiwan's coast guard located a Chinese-owned, Cameroonian-registered ship, the Shunxing-39, in waters near the port city of Keelung.

The vessel declined to halt and exited Taiwan waters, heading for Busan in South Korea. Taiwanese officials have sought help from the Korean government in investigating the ship, the Financial Times reports.

Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom said the cut did not impact internet performance. The 16-year-old TPE system runs from Oregon to Japan and the Chinese coast, with owners including Verizon, China Telecom, China Unicom and Chunghwa.

But Ho Cheng-hui, chief executive of Taiwanese civil defense organization Kuma Academy, told Taipei Times the incident appeared to be another Chinese "gray zone" tactic – an action carried out by a deniable third party aimed at testing the response.

Christmas cable cut

It is the latest in a series of unfortunate underwater events in Taiwan, whose cable links to offshore islands have suffered more than 20 breaks in recent years. The Taiwan cuts parallel the attacks on major subsea cables in the Baltic Sea in the past two months. 

The most recent took place on Christmas morning, targeting the Estlink 2 power cable connecting Finland and Estonia. The Finnish coast guard subsequently detained a Russian-linked oil tanker, the Eagle S, said to be part of Russia's secret "shadow fleet" that is helping it breach international sanctions.

European Union foreign policy head Kaja Kallas said it was "the latest in a series of suspected attacks on critical infrastructure."

In November, two Baltic Sea fiber cables were cut, and a Swedish investigation found that a Chinese-owned ship, the Yipeng 3, had dragged a cable for 100km across the seabed.

China denied a request from Swedish prosecutors to conduct an investigation on the ship, although it allowed them to board the ship to observe an interview with Chinese officials. 

As this analysis by Australian think tank ASPI points out, under the law of the sea, a legal procedure can only take place with the consent of the home state of the vessel. In this case, the ship was allowed to continue and any prosecution is almost impossible. 

So there's a reminder to the subsea industry, if it didn't already know: its assets are safe only if the world's leading powers can agree to protect them.