Taiwanese taekwondo athlete Yang Shu-chun (楊淑君), who was controversially disqualified at the recent Asian Games, has demanded South Korean TV station SBS make amends and correctly convey her position after she alleged it took her comments out of context.
Yang was upset because some people interpreted portions of her SBS interview an apology from Yang to South Korea on behalf of Taiwan for the anti-Korean sentiment triggered by her disqualification.
Yang said on Monday that being a straightforward person, she did not expect things to get so complicated, and she hoped that SBS would make a clarification.
PHOTO: CHIEN JUNG-FONG, TAIPEI TIMES
She said she agreed to the interview in the first place only because her South Korean coach was set to return to South Korea soon after his contract expired.
If she didn’t agree to the interview, she said, “he might have been a little bit worried about returning to South Korea,” because so many people blamed him for the incident.
However, when it came time to do the interview, she said she did not know that the TV station would edit it.
Taiwan’s Government Information Office (GIO) said SBS aired Yang’s interview “out of context,” and that the GIO office in South Korea had sent a letter to the TV station.
The letter stressed that Yang apologized to those South Koreans in Taiwan who were affected by anti-Korean sentiment, including Korean elementary schoolchildren who had eggs thrown at their school in Taipei.
However, she explained to SBS that those who disqualified her at the Games could not be forgiven, because the decision tarnished her reputation and insulted Taiwanese athletes.
The GIO said the TV station had incorrectly portrayed Yang’s opininons, which could mislead the Korean public. It asked SBS to air the interview in its entirety or make a clarification to avoid further complications.
Yang was controvertially disqualified from the women’s -under-49kg competition for allegedly wearing extra electronic sensors on her socks in the opening bout of the competition on Nov. 17. Video footage of the match, however, revealed that the sensors were not attached to her socks during the bout.
Some Taiwanese directed their anger about Yang’s disqualification at South Korea, because the technical official who disqualified Yang was a Philippine national of Korean descent and World Taekwondo Federation Secretary-General Yang Jin-suk, who gave inconsistent explanations of why Yang was disqualified, is a South Korean-born US citizen.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi