The entire saga involving the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and its Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) continues to produce plot twists at such a rapid pace that fiction publishers would throw it out for being ridiculously improbable. This past week was particularly bizarre, but surprisingly the press has almost entirely ignored a big story that could have serious national security implications and instead focused on a series of salacious bombshell allegations.
Ko is currently being held incommunicado by prosecutors while several criminal investigations are ongoing on allegations of bribery and stealing campaign funds. This last week for reasons unknown Ko completely shaved his head, altering his appearance so dramatically that journalists initially did not recognize him when he appeared being transported to be questioned by prosecutors.
Of course there was wild speculation as to why he did that, with the two most popular theories being it was some form of protest or was intended to rile up his “little sprout” supporters. My theory is he thought it would make himself look badass, but I doubt he would admit it so we will probably never know.
Photo: CNA
Meanwhile, in a twist right out of a children’s detective novel, reportedly prosecutors found proof that Ko had ordered his trusted aid Hsu Chih-yu (許芷瑜) — nicknamed “Orange” (as in the fruit) — to skedaddle to Japan when prosecutors started rounding up people in late August by reading the imprint left by his pen on the sheets of paper in the notepad below the one he wrote on. She is now a fugitive suspected of being Ko’s bagman and Taiwan has canceled her passport, but she is now thought to be in Australia on a Vanuatu passport.
“SECRETARY OF HIS HEART”
Then Mirror Media ran a series of serious allegations of sexual harassment and improper behavior against Ko. In the report were several testimonies describing Ko gesturing with his hands and talking about women’s appearances in ways entirely inappropriate in front of them, talking about which female politicians were attractive and openly ogling pictures of a famous cheerleader on his phone.
Photo: CNA
Mirror also described what came across as a very inappropriate relationship with an aide less than half his age who was referred to around the office as the “secretary of his heart” as Ko would cheer up when she was around. Their relationship was described as “intimate,” including massages and even a trip together to the north coast to “watch the ocean” together.
The only surprise about these allegations is they did not come out last year when the #MeToo movement exploded. Ko has a history of making disparaging, belittling and disturbing comments about women in public, it would not have been a stretch for an enterprising journalist to imagine him sexually harassing women.
The part of the report that caused my — and no doubt many other people’s — jaw to drop was the entry of media personality Chu Mei-feng (璩美鳳) into the story, adding her claim of sexual harassment. So far this entire tale has been filled with such improbable characters as the former doctor specializing in organ transplants turned presidential candidate Ko, the spritely “catch-me-if-you-can” Orange of Vanuatu and characters introduced in previous columns like the vengeful Grace Woo (吳靜怡), the snarky political gadfly “4xCat” (劉宇, aka 四叉貓) and the cartoonish, heavily tattooed, muscle-bound former gangster and current gym mogul Holger Chen (陳之漢), who livestreamed himself bleeding out after taking a bullet in an assassination attempt.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
THE IMPROBABLE CHU MEI-FENG
As an unlikely character, Chu is in a class of her own. Her first big scandal was as a television reporter when she visited a lesbian bar, filmed the people there and outed them on national television, which in 1992 would have led to many of them losing their jobs, being disowned by their families and their lives ruined. Though she lost her job over that, it did not stop voters giving her a resounding victory for a city council seat in Taipei as a member of the then-still popular New Party.
During this period she outed then Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and his wife of being devotees of cult leader Sung Chi-li (宋七力), who made a ton of money peddling photoshopped pictures of himself demonstrating supernatural powers to his gullible followers, but was later convicted of fraud.
In 1998, the Hsinchu mayor — who was rumored to be among her lovers — named her Director of the Cultural Affairs Bureau. In 2001 she was secretly filmed having sex with a married man, which gossip magazine Scoop Weekly burned onto VCDs and bundled them with their magazines to boost sales, which to no one’s surprise was super illegal, but by the time the police were able to try and put a stop to sales they had sold tons of copies. The publisher was jailed and publication shut down.
Remarkably, she went to visit the publisher of her VCD on his release from jail.
In a recent interview she was asked if she worried her son would see the video. She replied “Absolutely not, I even want to tell my son at least when I was young my body was not bad at all.”
CHU’S CHARMING COMPANY
She also ran for mayor of Kaohsiung as an independent the same year that Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) won, but only got 0.48 percent of the vote. She also briefly founded a political party whose name could be roughly translated as “Chinese Unification Alliance” (中華團結聯盟) and went on to serve as a spokesperson for the deeply pro-unification China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP).
Just this month, the Ministry of Interior announced it was seeking to forcibly disband CUPP, accusing it of a range of national security crimes and has brought charges against two members for accepting NT$74 million (US$2.3 million) from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to make propaganda promoting its political agenda and influencing Taiwan’s elections. Founded by former Bamboo Union leader Chang An-le (張安樂, aka White Wolf), 134 party members are suspected by police agencies of illegal activities ranging from obstruction of justice to human trafficking and homicide.
Today Chu is the editor of Yi Media (毅傳媒) which changed the first character in their Chinese name on the Web site and copied the logo of the Jimmy Lai (黎智英) founded Next media group that also launched Apple Daily after the company was disbanded. This is a true twist of the knife, as Lai is languishing in jail for standing up to the CCP, while Chu is busy supporting the CCP’s “united front” work at CUPP.
MING DYNASTY SECRET POLICE
Chu alleges that in October, 2022 in a meeting with Ko he grabbed her wrist and with his other hand stroked her arm and said “Your skin is so nice” and wrote in a LINE message some other creepy things.
She said that at the time she was hoping to help with efforts underway to form a joint TPP-KMT presidential ticket, and that at the time she still trusted Ko. She spoke to the media alongside Yogi Hsuan (宣昶有), who claimed to have been in the meeting and witnessed it.
Another alleged person in the meeting was Orange, but she is unavailable for comment at the moment. Chu showed the LINE messages to the press, and said she had only asked that Ko apologize for the comments.
Included in the LINE messages was this, which assumed he would be elected president: “I have decided to hire you as a deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council specializing in domestic investigation. Just like the leader of the Ming Dynasty Embroidered Uniform Guard.” She responded with the hands clasped, doe-eyed “grateful” LINE sticker.
The Embroidered Uniform Guard were secret police with wide-ranging powers, including judicial.
LYING TO VOTERS
In theory, he could have been joking, but if so it is a very odd, and very specific joke. It appears more likely he was serious.
If he was indeed serious, that he would offer such a post to an openly pro-CCP person is shocking. During the campaign, he talked a lot about the importance of defending Taiwan and increasing defense spending. Putting her in charge of domestic investigations for the National Security Council is the opposite of defending Taiwan.
Surprisingly, aside from including that quote, I had not seen any outrage or coverage of this. Searching online, I was only able to find one tiny news item that quoted a New Taipei city councilor pointing this out.
That Ko would have even considered such a thing should raise the alarm about how dangerous his character and private thinking are. Well, assuming the allegations of theft, bribery and sexual harassment have not already.
Donovan’s Deep Dives is a regular column by Courtney Donovan Smith (石東文) who writes in-depth analysis on everything about Taiwan’s political scene and geopolitics. Donovan is also the central Taiwan correspondent at ICRT FM100 Radio News, co-publisher of Compass Magazine, co-founder Taiwan Report (report.tw) and former chair of the Taichung American Chamber of Commerce. Follow him on X: @donovan_smith.
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