Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英), information division director of Taiwan’s representative office in Toronto, will report to the Government Information Office (GIO) tomorrow to account for whether he published online articles defaming Taiwan under the alias Fan Lan-chin (范蘭欽).
“[Kuo] is on his way back to Taiwan and will explain the matter to Minister Su Jun-pin [蘇俊賓] on Monday,” GIO Vice Minister Hsu Chiu-huang (?? said yesterday.
On Wednesday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) accused Kuo of having written a number of articles defaming Taiwan and its people under the pen name.
In the articles, the author referred to the Taiwanese as taibazi (台巴子, “Taiwanese rednecks”) and wokou (倭寇, “Japanese pirates”).
The author said “the imposition of martial law had been a benevolent act of the then government,” and that “[China] should spend many years suppressing [people in Taiwan] instead of granting any political freedom [to them] once it has taken Taiwan by force.” The author also called Taiwan a “ghost island.”
Kuan said her allegation was based on the fact that one of the online articles about Taipei’s Jiancheng Circle market posted on Fan Lan-chin’ blog on July 25, 2006, was also published by Kuo in the Chinese-language China Times on Aug. 2, 2006.
The article described feelings about the decline of the Jiancheng Circle, Taipei’s oldest food market. A phrase that read “we are high-class mainlanders” was mentioned in the article.
Hsu said Kuo sent a statement to the GIO to explain himself, in which he said that he wrote the China Times article but not the others under the name Fan Lan-chin.
Kuo was quoted by Hsu as saying the article he wrote was then posted on Fan Lan-chin’s blog.
Kuo was also quoted by Hsu as conceding that he did write “we are high-class mainlanders” in the article, but saying that the phrase was meant as “an expression of self-depreciation.”
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