A former graduate student of National Tsinghua University who murdered her love rival and mutilated her body in 1998 was released on parole yesterday after serving more than two-thirds, or nearly 11 years, of her sentence for the crime.
Meeting the press at the gate of the prison, Hung Hsiao-hui (洪曉慧) yesterday apologized to the public for what she did.
HURT
“I will do my best to do what I am supposed to do. Thank you for giving me a chance to live again,” she said. “I will try my best to make it up to those I have hurt in the past.”
Hung regained her freedom after the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) granted her parole on Nov. 11. The ministry cited a number of factors in its decision, including the fact that Hung had served more than two-thirds of her sentence of 16 years and three months with good behavior and had been awarded merits on nine occasions for good behavior as an inmate.
PROBATION
Hung will be on parole for the remaining five years of her sentence, during which she will be required by law to report to probation officers once a month.
The Kaohsiung Women’s Prison had applied for parole on Hung’s behalf four times, but was rejected three times by a Kaohsiung prison parole review board and once by the ministry.
Hung was found guilty of killing and mutilating her classmate Hsu Chia-chen (�?u) in an auditorium at National Tsinghua University in March 1998 after she found out that Hsu was having a relationship with her boyfriend, Tseng Huan-tai (曾煥泰).
Hung and Hsu were both second-year graduate students at the university’s radiobiology institute at the time.
SENTENCE
During an argument, Hung knocked Hsu unconscious and poured aqua regia — a potent corrosive chemical — over Hsu’s nose and mouth, killing her. Hung then dragged the body to the rear of the auditorium in the hope that it would remain undetected. After the murder, both Hung and Tseng, who was also a graduate student, dropped out of school.
Hung was eventually sentenced to 18 years in a jail, which was reduced last year to 16 years and three months, and ordered by the court to pay Hsu’s parents NT$24 million (US$718,600) in compensation.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS