The organizer of the Asia-Pacific Film Festival does not plan to invite South Korean pop groups to perform at the awards ceremony this year, film festival chairman Justin Chou (周守訓) said yesterday.
The announcement came amid a wave of anti-South Korean sentiment in Taiwan over the recent row involving Taiwanese taekwondo athlete Yang Shu-chun (楊淑君) at the Asian Games.
South Korean pop groups, which have a huge following in Taiwan, have frequently been invited to perform at various entertainment awards and events.
PHOTO: CHIEN JUNG-FONG, TAIPEI TIMES
However, a decision last week to disqualify Yang in the midst of a bout over allegations that she wore extra scoring sensors in her socks at the Games in China has set off anti-South Korean ire in Taiwan. Taekwondo events at the Games are held under the jurisdiction of the Seoul-based Asian Taekwondo Union, which later apologized for an article on its Web site branding Yang and the Taiwanese team as “cheats.”
POSITIVE REVIEWS
When the film festival was held in Taiwan last year, the organizer invited South Korean band Super Junior-M to perform and received positive reviews.
The organizer originally planned to invite South Korean bands, including Girls’ Generation, Wonder Girls and SS501, to perform in this year’s ceremony to be held at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei on Dec. 4.
Chou, a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker and a member of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee, said the organizer decided not to invite South Korean groups this year out of concern over public anger at South Korea.
“Something embarrassing may happen if we invite singers from South Korea to perform [at the ceremony],” he said.
Nonetheless, a South Korean film delegation will attend the ceremony as scheduled, adding that although the organizer is worried about possible protests at the ceremony, he believed Taiwanese fans would stay rational.
EGG-WASHED
Meanwhile, Minister of Education Wu Ching-ji (吳清基) yesterday urged restraint as security was enhanced at the Taipei Korean School, which was pelted with eggs several times in the past few days.
“I am here to express my concerns. I hope Taiwan will provide a safe learning environment to all students. The [South Korean] students are innocent,” Wu said after visiting the school.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the