Vietnamese television star sex scandal

Monday, 22 October 2007,
Vietnam has been hit by hurricanes, floods and a catastrophic bridge collapse of late, but the nation is abuzz with talk of just one thing - a blurry video of an encounter between two teenagers.

Vietnam state television on Monday pinned a popular nightly teenage TV soap after its star was apparently featured in an online amateur sex clip.

Hoang Thuy Linh, 19, the lead actress of "Vang Anh's Diary," found herself at the center of a storm when Internet users downloaded the five-minute footage late last week from a video-sharing website and started circulating it.

Angry parents called for Linh, who appears to be the woman in the clip, to be sacked, while some fans jumped to her defense saying the film, shot by mobile telephone camera, had been published to harm her reputation.

On Monday, Vietnam Television (VTV) decided to cancel the show, an interactive youth drama that offers lessons on teenage issues and allows viewers to vote on moral and lifestyle questions by mobile text message and email.

"The show 'Vang Anh's Diary' will stop broadcasting," said VTV in a brief online statement. "It is the decision of the management of VTV as well as the proposal of Hoang Thuy Linh, the actress for the role of Vang Anh in the show."

The soap, in its second season, had been controversial in the communist country, praised by some for addressing youth issues but criticized by others for focusing on the concerns of the fashionable urban middle-class elite.

A five-minute clip, filmed by mobile phone, was originally posted on YouTube by an anonymous user.

It has since been removed, but copies of it - including a 20-minute long version - are being circulated on other websites.

In "Vang Anh's Diaries," Thuy Linh portrayed an earnest high school girl, modern and stylish but determined to uphold the traditional virtues of "cong, dung, ngon" and "hanh," which promote women as tidy, charming, soft-spoken and chaste.

Then the 16-minute video hit the Internet on Oct. 15 featuring Thuy Linh in bed with her former boyfriend, both of them apparently aware that they were on camera.

On Thursday, Hanoi police detained four college students accused of posting the sex clip to the Internet. They could face charges of "spreading depraved cultural items," which carries a sentence of six months to 15 years if convicted.

Police identified the man in the clip as 20-year-old Vu Hoang Viet, who is currently studying overseas. They said a friend copied the film off of Viet's laptop, and passed it along to other friends who then posted it online.

Most of the public's wrath has been directed at Thuy Linh rather than Viet.

"People will forgive him, but not her," said Tran Minh Nguyet of the Vietnam Women's Union, which promotes gender equality. "Vietnamese think it's OK for a boy to have sex at that age, but not for a girl. It's absolutely unfair."

The video has been the talk of Vietnam. Even members of Vietnam's National Assembly were overheard gossiping about it last week at the opening of the new legislative session.

A few lonely voices have sprung up in Thuy Linh's defense. But in most newspapers and on blogs and Web sites, the video has become the target of jokes and condemnation.

VietnamNet, a popular online newspaper, said the episode underscored the "dark side of globalization" and warned that a flood of foreign influences "threaten Vietnam's cultural foundation."

The scandal also has disillusioned many of Thuy Linh's biggest fans.

"She was supposed to set a good example for Vietnamese students nationwide," said Chi, 14, a Hanoi junior high school student who declined to give her full name. "Now this scandal has ruined everything. It's completely destroyed her image."

Hilton's sex tape, made with then-boyfriend Rick Salomon in eerie night-vision green, surfaced just before the start of her reality TV series, "The Simple Life" and helped propel her to superstardom.

But in Vietnam, the video scandal is certain to destroy Thuy Linh's career, said Nguyet of the Vietnam Women's Union.

"Vietnam is changing quickly, but there's no way Thuy Linh will be forgiven," Nguyet said. "That will take another generation."

Despite unprecedented attention from the public, state media soon went cold on the story after some critics branded the topic "sensational" and "cheap".

But the frenzy continues on the internet.

Blogs and forums are flooded with millions of messages discussing whether Thuy Linh deserves sympathy or punishment, and whether she needs to apologise publicly to her fans.

"The topic cannot be spared only for tabloids to cover," wrote journalists Tran Le Thuy and Huy Duc in Sai Gon Tiep Thi.

"This poses a big question about modern life that the mainstream newspapers need to answer...

"That is the question about information control in terms of blogging [and] privacy protection. That is also the question about the sexual revolution among the young people in Vietnam nowadays."

While the term "sexual revolution" remains somewhat controversial - it is an editorial minefield for the Vietnamese press - the mention of it can work wonders for TV programmes.

The VTV show in which the closure of Vang Anh's Diaries was announced, with Thuy Linh tearfully apologising to her parents and begging for understanding from her fans, attracted a phenomenal number of viewers.

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