Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Questions as to whether President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was misquoted during an interview with foreign media are once again the subject of discussion, adding to a long string of back-and-forth mix-ups.

The Government Information Office (GIO) on Saturday asked a Japanese daily to run a correction on comments about cross-strait relations that were attributed to the president during an interview published last week.

A report by the Yomiuri Shimbun which said that Ma had accepted the “one China” principle was “inconsistent with the facts,” the GIO said, referring to the interview transcript that has since been posted on the Presidential Office Web site.

Newspapers have reported the story of a woman named Chang Yi-jung (張旖容), who took it upon herself to search for letters written by her maternal grandfather Huang Wen-kung (黃溫恭) to his wife before he was executed in 1953, during the period of repression known as the White Terror.

Chang discovered that her grandfather had written five wills, which he wanted to be given to his wife. Sadly, this wish was not carried out and it was not until 2009, 56 years later, that Huang’s granddaughter found his last letters, by which time Huang’s wife was losing her mental faculties and was unable to understand her late husband’s final wishes.