Former Hsinchu City Bureau of Cultural Affairs chief Chu Mei-feng (
"I want to cut off all relations and connections between Tsai and myself from now on," Chu said before she entered a pretrial hearing regarding her sex-VCD scandal at the Taipei District Court yesterday.
"I don't care what other people might think of me. I don't want to sue him anymore. Let bygones be bygones."
According to Chung Yung-sheng (鍾永盛), Chu's lawyer, Chu arrived at his office on Tuesday afternoon and told him that she wanted to drop the charge against Tsai.
"I explained the costs and effects of the plan to her and asked her to think twice, but she insisted on going ahead," Chung said.
While Tsai will now be listed as a witness in the case instead of a defendant, Chu was less forgiving toward two other defendants in the case.
"I will never forgive Kuo Yu-ling (
Kuo was a friend and spiritual teacher of Chu. Kuo and Kao have both been charged with invasion of privacy along with Tsai.
However, Article 239 of the Criminal Code says that by dropping the charge against Tsai, the same charge against Kuo and Kao will be automatically dropped as well.
Invasion of privacy is a criminal charge but can be dropped at the request of the plaintiff.
However, prosecutors are pursuing charges against several defendants, including Kao and Kuo, for other offences against privacy, offending public morals and forging documents.
Kuo allegedly planted a hidden camera in Chu's Tamsui apartment last year with the help of Tsai, Chu's former lover, and recorded material of Chu having sex with a married man.
Kuo then, along with her daughter, allegedly sold the material to Scoop magazine, which released it on a VCD that was distributed in a December edition.
Senior Prosecutor Lin Jinn-tsun's (林錦村) indictment suggested a four-year sentence for Kuo; a two-year-and-two-month sentence for Scoop magazine President Shen Yeh (沈野); a one-year-and-four-month sentence for his daughter, Shen Jung (沈嶸), who is also the publisher for the magazine; and a one-year-and-10-month sentence for Shen Yeh's assistant, Wei An (韋安).
Without suggesting sentences, the indictment also names Kao; Scoop magazine employees Lin Jia-nan (
Chung-ti Technology was the company that produced and duplicated the VCD for the magazine.
Chung said that Chu's civil claim of NT$50 million from Kuo, Kao and Tsai would be dropped along with the invasion of privacy charges.
However, she is pursuing other claims for damages of NT$20.6 million from Kuo; NT$60 million from Shen Yeh, Shen Jung, Wei, Lin Jia-nan, Shao, Wang Hsu-yun and Wang Ya-wei, and NT$3 million from Hu.
A further pre-trial hearing is scheduled for today.
DAREDEVIL: Honnold said it had always been a dream of his to climb Taipei 101, while a Netflix producer said the skyscraper was ‘a real icon of this country’ US climber Alex Honnold yesterday took on Taiwan’s tallest building, becoming the first person to scale Taipei 101 without a rope, harness or safety net. Hundreds of spectators gathered at the base of the 101-story skyscraper to watch Honnold, 40, embark on his daredevil feat, which was also broadcast live on Netflix. Dressed in a red T-shirt and yellow custom-made climbing shoes, Honnold swiftly moved up the southeast face of the glass and steel building. At one point, he stepped onto a platform midway up to wave down at fans and onlookers who were taking photos. People watching from inside
A Vietnamese migrant worker yesterday won NT$12 million (US$379,627) on a Lunar New Year scratch card in Kaohsiung as part of Taiwan Lottery Co’s (台灣彩券) “NT$12 Million Grand Fortune” (1200萬大吉利) game. The man was the first top-prize winner of the new game launched on Jan. 6 to mark the Lunar New Year. Three Vietnamese migrant workers visited a Taiwan Lottery shop on Xinyue Street in Kaohsiung’s Gangshan District (崗山), a store representative said. The player bought multiple tickets and, after winning nothing, held the final lottery ticket in one hand and rubbed the store’s statue of the Maitreya Buddha’s belly with the other,
‘NATO-PLUS’: ‘Our strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific are facing increasing aggression by the Chinese Communist Party,’ US Representative Rob Wittman said The US House of Representatives on Monday released its version of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes US$1.15 billion to support security cooperation with Taiwan. The omnibus act, covering US$1.2 trillion of spending, allocates US$1 billion for the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative, as well as US$150 million for the replacement of defense articles and reimbursement of defense services provided to Taiwan. The fund allocations were based on the US National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2026 that was passed by the US Congress last month and authorized up to US$1 billion to the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency in support of the
‘COMMITTED TO DETERRENCE’: Washington would stand by its allies, but it can only help as much as countries help themselves, Raymond Greene said The US is committed to deterrence in the first island chain, but it should not bear the burden alone, as “freedom is not free,” American Institute in Taiwan Director Raymond Greene said in a speech at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research’s “Strengthening Resilience: Defense as the Engine of Development” seminar in Taipei yesterday. In the speech, titled “Investing Together and a Secure and Prosperous Future,” Greene highlighted the contributions of US President Donald Trump’s administration to Taiwan’s defense efforts, including the establishment of supply chains for drones and autonomous systems, offers of security assistance and the expansion of
RSS