A pricing policy of the Korean Airlines may cause the already strained relations between Taiwan and South Korea to become even worse. A lawmaker has pointed out that, on the Korean Airlines' official website, the airfare for a round trip between Taipei and Seoul costs about 1,600 NT dollars higher on the Traditional Chinese web page than on the one in Simplified Chinese, which angered many Taiwanese travelers.

On the Korean Airlines website, if China is picked and use simplified Chinese to view the site to purchase a round trip ticket between Taipei and Seoul, the site would show departure origin to be Taipei of Peoples Republic of China and the price would be NT$8,215.

However, if the passenger select Southeast Asia and log on using traditional Chinese to purchase the same route same date round trip ticket, the departing city would be Taipei, Taiwan at a price of NT$9,860, that is a difference of NT$1,645.

A lawmaker was made aware of the situation for the airline is forcing Taiwanese passengers to pick between price and sovereignty, more over, most people who would log in to Korean Airlines website using simplified Chinese are Mainland Chinese, Korean Airlines action could be a show to China as a motivation.

Thus, the Ministry of Transportation and communications plus the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were asked to protest against the South Korean government on the issue.

The MOFA said that, it has already contacted Korean Airlines, which mentioned that the site was maintained by outside company and it would get more information on it while reporting back to Koreans head office of the situation.

In order to prevent similar situations from happening, the MOFA has already send telegram to all foreign diplomatic offices to monitor different websites.

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