Taiwanese former taekwondo champion Su Li-wen (蘇麗文) threw in her support behind for fellow taekwondo athlete Yang Shu-chun (楊淑君) on Wednesday with an entry on her blog, accusing China of resorting to dirty tricks.
Su described Yang’s disqualification as “a game that killed a Taiwanese athlete.”
Su is largely remembered as the national heroine who, despite falling to the ground 11 times after being injured, continued to fight until her coach carried her out of the ring at the 2008 Olympics, displaying a bout of perseverance that moved many Taiwanese.
Su, who won the taekwondo championship at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, finished first in the 2007 Summer Universade and brought home a gold from the 2008 Asian Taekwondo Championship, said in her blog that she felt very angry after watching the match on Wednesday because the judge not only disqualified Yang, but also accused Yang of “cheating.”
“I find it extremely unacceptable,” Su said. “I’ve been a [taekwondo] athlete for many years. This was the first time I have heard such a ridiculous accusation.”
“[Yang] scored with upper movements. Given our ranking as among the top three in the world, there is no need for us to play tricks against an opponent who is way below us. This is absolutely a political smear campaign,” Su said.
Su said Yang is almost unparallel in her category, adding that Yang scored six points with pressing movements and two with back kicks, all of which were manually scored by the judge rather than by the electronic score system.
As such, it goes to show that Yang was way ahead of her opponent and that cheating was unnecessary, Su said.
“It doesn’t matter if we fight to the death during the Games, but we cannot accept such an accusation and unfair treatment,” Su said.
She urged other Taiwanese athletes to restore the Taiwanese team’s honor in the next three days, saying “we are the undefeatable children of Taiwan.”
WANG RELEASED: A police investigation showed that an organized crime group allegedly taught their clients how to pretend to be sick during medical exams Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and 11 others were released on bail yesterday, after being questioned for allegedly dodging compulsory military service or forging documents to help others avoid serving. Wang, 33, was catapulted into stardom for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代). Lately, he has been focusing on developing his entertainment career in China. The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last month began investigating an organized crime group that is allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified documents. Police in New Taipei City Yonghe Precinct at the end of last month arrested the main suspect,
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
Eleven people, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸), were taken into custody today for questioning regarding the evasion of compulsory military service and document forgery, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. Eight of the people, including Wang, are suspected of evading military service, while three are suspected of forging medical documents to assist them, the report said. They are all being questioned by police and would later be transferred to the prosecutors’ office for further investigation. Three men surnamed Lee (李), Chang (張) and Lin (林) are suspected of improperly assisting conscripts in changing their military classification from “stand-by
LITTORAL REGIMENTS: The US Marine Corps is transitioning to an ‘island hopping’ strategy to counterattack Beijing’s area denial strategy The US Marine Corps (USMC) has introduced new anti-drone systems to bolster air defense in the Pacific island chain amid growing Chinese military influence in the region, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. The new Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) Mk 1 is being developed to counter “the growing menace of unmanned aerial systems,” it cited the Marine Corps as saying. China has constructed a powerful defense mechanism in the Pacific Ocean west of the first island chain by deploying weapons such as rockets, submarines and anti-ship missiles — which is part of its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy against adversaries — the