Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) yesterday urged the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to file a complaint with its South Korean counterpart after the organizer of this year’s Startup Nations Summit Global Conference and World Startup Competition in Seoul apparently listed Taiwan’s VMFive as a participant from “China (Beijing)” on the event Web site.
Tsai said that shortly after taking the top prize at the Tech Crunch competition in Beijing in August, award-winning software design company VMFive took first place in the Innovation and Startups incentive program hosted by the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL) and received NT$2 million (US$65,000) in prize money.
Therefore, the company is now, in a sense, partly funded by the government, he said.
“We should not allow such an outstanding company to be bullied and our sovereignty subordinated by China time and time again. I will therefore ask the foreign ministry to file a complaint with its South Korean counterpart,” he said.
VMFive spokesperson Wu Cheng-shi (吳承禧) said the sum the firm received from the NARL is prize money and therefore cannot be regarded as a government subsidy.
She added that the organizer of next week’s startup event — the non-governmental Banks Foundation for Young Entrepreneurs — said the entry list was meant to show where participants acquired the qualification to compete, not their country of origin. VMFive qualified for the Seoul event after winning TechCrunch in China, Wu said.
She said VMFive tried to negotiate the issue with the hosts of both events, asking that an exception be made, but had been unsuccessful.
“VMFive is a Taiwanese firm equipped with Taiwanese technology. We aim for the global market with a passion for entrepreneurship, but we will credit our success to Taiwan,” she said.
Another local team in the contest, iCHEF, is listed as a participant from Taiwan and has the nation’s flag next to its entry.
When reached for comment, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrew Kao (高振群) said the ministry is unaware of the incident, but would contact the South Korean Foreign Ministry immediately.
“Given the sheer number of foreign NGOs, these kind of things happen from time to time. I can promise the legislator [Tsai] that we will fix the problem right away,” he said.
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