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Under-fire official arrives back in Taiwan

Kuo Kuan-ying, director of information at Taiwan’s representative office in Toronto, is surrounded by reporters as he prepares to leave Taiwan Taoyuan Airport yesterday after arriving from Canada. PHOTO: YAO KAI-SHIOU, TAIPEI TIMES

The Toronto-based Government Information Office (GIO) official at the center of a controversy for allegedly having written several articles defaming Taiwan and Taiwanese people returned to Taiwan yesterday and is set to answer to a GIO summons today.

When approached by reporters at Taoyuan International Airport, Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英), director of the information division at Taiwan’s representative office in Toronto, said he came back to Taiwan in a bid to explain the matter to the GIO. He promised to fully account for the allegations to the press after he “has a shave.”

The GIO summoned Kuo to return to Taiwan for questioning after Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) on Friday promised to give the public an explanation today regarding the controversy surrounding Kuo.

Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) alleged on Wednesday that Kuo used the pen name Fan Lan-chin (范蘭欽) to publish a number of articles online containing remarks that defamed Taiwan.

The articles referred to Taiwanese as taibazi (台巴子), meaning “Taiwanese rednecks,” or wokou (倭寇), meaning “Japanese pirates.”

The author of the articles 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.”

Kuan said her allegation was based on the fact that an online article about Taipei’s Jiancheng Circle market posted on Fan Lan-chin’s 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.

Kuo has denied that he wrote articles under the pen name of Fan Lan-chin.

But a Web user at the Professional Technology Temple — the most popular bulletin board system of the National Taiwan University — questioned Kuo’s denial.

The user said that the articles written by Fan that the user had saved bore a striking resemblance to those posted on a Web page called “Section of Kuo, the Gifted” on the Web site of the “Chinese Unification Promotion Party.”

When asked for comment, GIO Minister Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) said the office ordered Kuo to return to Taiwan to answer the allegations. Su said the office would stand by Kuo if it was proved that Kuo did not write the articles.

Meanwhile, Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) was quoted by a Central News Agency report as saying yesterday that he will remind all officials at Taiwan’s overseas diplomatic missions about the rule that diplomats are not allowed to write political commentary articles whether using their real name or a pen name.

Ou said in the interview it would be highly inappropriate if Kuo had written the articles and said that the rule applies not only to articles published in newspaper or magazine, but also articles on blogs or Internet forums.

Additional reporting by staff writer
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