By Ian Werther in News — 19 Mar 2026

Taiwan designates Korea as Namhan; warns ETA changes if no response by March 31

Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on the 1st that the designation for Korea on Taiwan’s foreign-resident card has been changed to “Namhan” (South Korea), in line with the principle of equal footing between the two sides. It added that if Korea does not respond positively by March 31, Taiwan will take corresponding measures against Taiwan’s Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) program.

The move comes amid a dispute over how Korea labels Taiwan in its immigration-related forms. Taiwan objects to Korea’s practice of listing Taiwan as “China (Taiwan)” or otherwise tying Taiwan to China on the departure and destination fields of Korea’s ETA.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry stressed that Koreas and Taiwan have long-standing economic, cultural, and people-to-people exchanges, and that Taiwan values that relationship. It urged Korea to rectify the “unfair” labeling on Korea’s ETA and to engage constructively.

A new image of Eta Carinae and its Homunculus Nebula using recent observations acquired in early and mid 2018. I'll do my best to explain what's going on here, though my description may be inadequate.
Take special note of the blue parts of the nebula. Now imagine you are Nathan Smith, an astronomer who has been studying the Carina nebula and Eta Carinae in particular for years, now. His March 2018 observations used a filter designed to only allow light from a certain magnesium emission line to pass through, and this particular filter had never been used to look at it before. Surprisingly, this part of the nebula was in a different shape from previously observed emission lines. This is really cool, because maybe it can tell us more about the enigmatic process this system is going through.
But wait, in order to properly characterize this new layer of nebula, it had to then be compared to light from some other filters. However, the whole thing is expanding rapidly, and old imagery was too far out of alignment from the new imagery. Wait too long, and new data won't match, either. Enter the Director's Discretionary budget, which allows for somewhat unplanned, emergent observations to take place. Luckily for Smith, he got his new observations, and luckily for us, this means we get a new image of this amazing nebula!
I have some things to mention regarding the processing of this image. First, there were some pretty huge charge bleeds I had to either fill in with data from shorter exposures, or clean up with cloned data. Second, coverage was lacking around the left side and lower right corner of the image. Third, there were massive, circular filter ghosts everywhere, especially in the F658N data. I made use of older observations to help mitigate these artifacts, but as previously mentioned the bits of nebula are moving quite a bit, so I had to stretch and nudge them to get them to match. This all should be a reasonable approximation of how the nebula looked at this epoch, but if you are trying to recreate this image yourself, know that it took a lot of work and yours will probably turn out different.
I also want to mention that the smaller blue stars were very distracting and green, so I made creative use of the F658N data to help dim them to a much softer appearance.
Data from the following proposals were used to create this image:
Imaging Shock Fronts in the Outer Ejecta of Eta Carinae
Directors Discretionary observations of shock excitation around Eta Carinae with WFC3
An ACS H-alpha Survey of the Carina Nebula
Orange: ACS/WFC F658N
Green: WFC3/UVIS F336W
Cyan: WFC3/UVIS F280N

North is up. — Representative image for context; not directly related to the specific event in this article. License: CC BY 2.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Taiwan had publicly raised the issue again last December. President Tsai Ing-wen has said she hopes Koreas can work together to advance regional peace, stability, and prosperity. Taiwan’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chiang Ming-chi, noted that Korea maintains a large trade surplus with Taiwan and argued that unfriendly actions would be inappropriate.

A Korean foreign ministry official said Seoul is reviewing the matter, considering various factors, and that this is not a new issue. The ministry indicated it would handle the situation according to Korea’s fundamental stance.

The Kaohsiung Music Center and the Lingyaliao Railroad Bridge illuminated in the colors of Ukraine's national flag during the 2022 Taiwan Lantern Festival. This light show was displayed from February 26, two days after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, to February 28, when the annual Lantern Festival ended.
This image is a blend of different exposure times: 59.0", 30.0", 9.0", 4.0", 2.0", and 1.0". — Representative image for context; not directly related to the specific event in this article. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Taiwan’s side also cited the broader international backdrop, including the One China principle emphasized by Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office as a basic norm of international relations.

For U.S. readers, the dispute highlights how Taiwan’s international status and cross-strait dynamics can intersect with practical issues such as travel, trade, and supply chains. Taiwan is a critical supplier of semiconductors and other advanced electronics, and Korea is a major technology player in its own right; together, friction over how Taiwan is labeled in immigration and travel documents can ripple into business travel, regulatory coordination, and regional security alignments that touch U.S. interests in Asia.

Context for non-Korean readers: Taoyuan International Airport in Taiwan is a major international hub, underscoring how its travelers interact with Korea’s immigration systems. The case centers on how national designations are used in bilateral administrative forms and what happens when states object to those designations in ways that affect travel and visa processes.

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