President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday approved the resignation of Presidential Office spokesman Ting Yun-kung (丁允恭) following reports about his private life in local media.
Ting in a statement earlier in the day said that he had submitted his resignation and it had been accepted by the president.
Ting apologized for the trouble the scandal has caused his superiors and everyone concerned, adding that his actions have betrayed the public’s expectations.
Photo: Chung Chih-kai, Taipei Times
Ting’s resignation came after the Chinese-language Mirror Media magazine reported that he had relationships with four women at the same time while serving as the director of Kaohsiung’s Information Bureau in 2014, even though he was engaged to be married at the time.
The magazine based its report on correspondence records provided by one of Ting’s former girlfriends, who was a TV station reporter at the time.
The ex-girlfriend said they had sex several times in his Kaohsiung office during work hours, the magazine reported.
She became pregnant three times during the affair, the woman said, but added that she terminated all three pregnancies at Ting’s insistence so as not to affect his career, the report said.
The relationship caused a relapse of her depression, the magazine quoted the woman as saying.
The woman in 2017 started dating a fellow reporter and wanted to break up with Ting, but Ting tried to foil her new relationship by posting intimate photographs of them on social media, she said.
She at the time wrote to then-Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) to report Ting’s attempts to interfere with her personal life, and although Chen admonished Ting and told him to keep his relationships with women at the workplace professional, this did not stop Ting from being promoted to Presidential Office spokesman, the report said.
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