[News] Actress Goo Hye-sun to serve as South Korea's film ambassador in Asia Pacific Film Festival despite brewing anti-Korean sentiments in Taiwan.

[News] Actress Goo Hye-sun to serve as South Korea's film ambassador in Asia Pacific Film Festival despite brewing anti-Korean sentiments in Taiwan.
Cr. - cpopaccess

Next week marks the 54th Asia Pacific Film Festival, a prestigious film festival held in Taiwan this year which gathers top filmmakers and entertainers from around the region to celebrate the joys of film. In an effort to expand the film festival to a larger and more general audience, organizers for the festival hoped to continue inviting popular pop groups from South Korea to take part in musical performances since South Korean boy band Super Junior's participation at last year's festivities.

Due to the recent row stemming from female Taiwanese taekwondo athlete Yang Shu-chun's disqualification from the recent Asian Games by a South Korean sports official not present at the match, brewing anti-Korean sentiments in Taiwan led to organizers of the festival to terminate those original plans. "We were considering inviting South Korean groups to perform but we decided to drop the idea as the atmosphere is wrong," Justin Chou, an organizer of the Asia Pacific Film Festival, told reporters.



Rumors had been circulating by the media that the organizers had already invited groups such as SNSD and SS501 to take part in this year's festivities, but the organizers clarified that invitation letters were never sent out since the original plan was never finalized, thus no rude behavior was committed in having to retract invitations since none were ever sent out.

Despite the lack of Korean pop groups taking part in music performances at the film festival, the target audience of filmmakers and actors that include those from South Korea were still welcomed to take part in the festivities. Popular Korean actress Goo Hye-sun -- who starred in the South Korean idol drama adaptation Boys Over Flowers and is currently filming for the Taiwanese idol drama adaptation Absolute Boyfriend -- has not been fazed from attending the festivities, and is in fact taking part to serve as the ambassador for her native country's films.

Taiwan is the host country for this year's Asia Pacific Film Festival, which will take place next week on December 2-4, 2010.