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Taiwan hackers attack taekwondo website

Taiwanese hackers launched cyber-attacks on Asia’s top taekwondo body as anger mounted on the island over the controversial disqualification of a female fighter in the Asian Games, reports said Friday.

Hackers wrote “Shame on you” and “Give back the gold” on the Asian Taekwondo Union’s website, amid accusations that China and South Korea were behind the decision to disqualify the Taiwanese athlete, the Central News Agency said.

The hackers also put an image of a hand with its middle finger raised on top of the flags of the two countries, along with a message stating that “we are all Taiwanese”, it reported.

On Friday the website’s homepage bore a message in Korean saying it was temporarily down “because of excessive traffic”.

Taiwan is in uproar over the fate of Yang Shu-chun, a gold medal hopeful, who was disqualified on Wednesday from the Asian Games in Guangzhou, southern China, for using extra sensors in her socks.

Television footage showed a man burning a South Korean paper flag in a Taipei street Thursday.

The removal of Yang, Taiwan’s top taekwondo fighter, was especially painful for the diplomatically isolated island which sees the Korean martial art as a rare chance to shine on the world stage.

Many Taiwanese shed tears of joy when two taekwondo athletes won the island’s first gold medals in the 2004 Athens Olympics, and the sport has only grown in popularity on the island since.

Yang, 25, was disqualified because she had an extra electronic sensor taped to each of her heels in an effort to score more points, according to the World Taekwondo Federation.

She has insisted the sensors were within the rules and that she had no intention of manipulating or cheating in the match.

China said Friday it was “regretful” over the disqualification while world taekwondo chiefs said a full inquiry would be held into the incident, although a final decision would only be made once the Games conclude on November 27.