False: This photo is altered. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen did not kneel before US senators

By Justin Chun Ting Cheung, Audrey Sze Yuet Ng and Jeff Cheung Cheuk Yin

An image showing Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen kneeling before three U.S. senators was posted on Twitter on June 7. It gained more than 200 likes and has been retweeted over 20 times. The same image can also be found in other tweets ( here and here).

The post insinuated that Tsai demonstrably exhibited subservience toward the U.S. but the image was manipulated.

Image search led to this original photo from the Associated Press as distributed by the Taiwan Presidential Office.

Tsai’s photo from Associated Press.

According to the caption provided by AP, the original photo was released by the Taiwan Presidential Office and shows Tsai meeting U.S. senators Tammy Duckworth, Dan Sullivan and Chris Coons on June 6.

The three senators went there to say the U.S. will donate 750,000 COVID-19 vaccines to Taiwan.

The red carpet was digitally extended (area beneath the yellow line). Two nameplates were blurred (in red circles). The portable lectern in the original photo was given legs (in blue circle) that overlap with the real pole stand (in green circles). The legs with bended knees were added to Tsai’s body (in yellow circle).

The altered image appeared to be a composite of at least two photos — one taken in 2017 in South Korea when then secretary-general of the National Assembly, Woo Yun-geun, kneeled to pay respect to the cleaners.

The photo of Woo can be found on Baidu images with a keyword search “跪拜”, which means “to kneel and worship”.

Woo’s legs and shoes were cropped out and replaced Tsai’s in the manipulated image.

The same photo has been used in an article from the news website of Maeil Broadcasting Network, a Korean cable TV network.

Annie Lab has reconstructed how the composite of Woo’s legs and Tsai’s original photo was made.

The base of the portable lectern in the manipulated image seems to be added from another photo.

Annie Lab noticed the structure of the legs is different from the one Tsai used during the event.

The actual base has a different shape and was spread much wider as shown in the video (2:50) posted by Taiwan Presidential Office.

It is also worth noting in the 4-minute video Tsai was standing all the time when giving her speech.

Differences between the portable lectern legs shown in the video (2:50) from the Presidential Office (left) and the manipulated image (right).

Evidence from digital image forensics

Annie Lab also analyzed the image using a photo forensic tool.

Double Quantization

A juxtaposition showing before-and-after Double Quantization of the manipulated image.

This tool indicated that the part containing the base of the lectern could be a spliced portion of another image with a different quality that has been inserted into another with a lower quality.

Error Level Analysis

A juxtaposition showing before-and-after Error Level Analysis of the manipulated image.

Edges of the lectern appeared brighter than the base legs. In the original photo, the brightness of all edges, including the pole near the bottom, is uniform. The results indicate the base part was not in the original photo but was added.

Ghost

A juxtaposition showing before-and-after Ghosts algorithm of the manipulated image.

The analysis of “ghost” also shows potential tampering. The lectern base shows a different quality from the rest of the photo, implying that a splice of another image could have been added there.

A thread on Twitter also indicates the image was intentionally created.

A tweet credited the image to another user with the handle @n6dnb. This user @n6dnb first posted the lower half of this image in response to another tweet containing the original photo that shows Tsai greeting the U.S. senators standing up.

The text in the comment says jokingly, when translated in English, the lower half of the picture fell on the floor so the user “picked it up”.

The manipulated part of the image posted by Twitter user @n6dnb.

Considering the joking nature of the post, the image could have been made as a meme, but many seem to have mistaken it as a real news photo and shared it, including China-based Taiwanese actor Huang On.

Taiwan faced surging COVID-19 cases in May. Although the government has ordered 20 million doses of vaccine, by early June only 870,000 doses were available in a population of 24 million.

China has offered Chinese-made vaccines, but Taiwan banned their import due to “safety concerns” while the U.S. and Japan donated a total of 2 million doses to Taiwan in early June.

Updated on June 22, 2021: The earlier version of this story mistakenly identified the South Korean government official bowing in the photo as Chung Sye-kyun, speaker of the National Assembly. The official in the photo is Woo Yun-geun, then secretary-general of the National Assembly.

Disclaimer: Although faculty members at the Journalism & Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong have done everything possible to verify the accuracy of the story, we cannot guarantee there are no mistakes. If you notice an error or have any questions, please email us.

Originally published at https://annielab.org on June 18, 2021.