Wang Leehom's wife posts another letter, says he tried to bribe her to recant statement
Lee Jinglei has asked for a public apology by 3pm, Sunday (Dec 19). Will Wang apologise or keep his silence?
Wang Leehom seems to have dug himself into a pit. The singer and his ex-wife Lee Jinglei in happier times. (Photo: Instagram/Wangleehom)
We can't keep up with all the twists and turns in this scandalous saga of divorce, alleged adultery, in-laws and marital strife.
After Wang Leehom's ex-wife, Lee Jinglei, posted a long, multiple-page letter on Dec 17 detailing the singer's numerous infidelities in the course of their relationship, the internet blew up with comments and reactions.
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BY2's Yumi Bai, who was implicated as one of the people Wang had had an affair with – she once called him by the nickname 'HomHom' in a social media post, which Lee wrote about without mentioning her name – filed a police report in the wee hours of the morning of Dec 18 and posted a picture of the report on her own social media, captioning it, "Words have power. Spreading rumours can distort the truth. Something you say could kill someone else. I'm sorry to have bothered the police in the middle of the night."Lee responded by commenting, "Please give me the police officer's contact details and I will provide them with evidence."
And, while Wang, who was swiftly dropped by brands including car and jewellery brands Infiniti China and Chow Tai Seng, kept his silence, his father reportedly contacted Taiwanese media with his own letter, saying that Lee had forced Wang into marriage when she got pregnant by threatening to go to the media with a tell-all.
He also wrote that Wang had endured seven years of suffering including the last two years of hell, and that Lee had received hundreds of millions of Taiwanese dollars in addition to domestic helpers, a nanny for the children and a dedicated driver.
Her letter wasn't written on the spur of the moment but had been carefully deliberated for two years, he said.
On Sunday morning (Dec 19) Lee posted another letter in response, saying she feels sad that at the age of 80, Wang's father should have to lie to defend his 45-year-old son.
In the letter, she accused Wang of hiding behind his father and orchestrating the whole thing instead of facing the music, saying that the old man would not have known how to contact the media on his own.
"No matter how much dirty water you splash on me, your own clothes won't get cleaner," she wrote, clearly much aggrieved. "I was very reserved in my sharing because you're still the children's father, after all. I'm very disappointed that what today brought was not your apology but you trying to protect yourself again, using friends and relatives to distort the truth and bring me down."
She went on to say that after her letter went out, Wang had tried to buy her silence.
"Yesterday afternoon, I received a message about you trying to bribe me. You said that if I apologised publicly saying I wrote what I did because I wasn't of sound mind, you would give me the house I'm now living in with the kids. I told you I was very disappointed that after all these years you still haven't realised that I'm not the kind of person who can be bought with money," she wrote.
"The funny part is that I actually seriously considered your request to sacrifice my own reputation in order to save your career... You still selfishly believe that my reputation and future are of no consequence. Only yours is."
She then addressed the points that Wang's father had made in his letter one by one.
She revealed that when she and Wang were dating, no contraception was used throughout that time. "At his age, he should know that that leads to pregnancy," she said. Wang is 10 years older than her.
Wang had always said he wanted to have kids as soon as possible, she wrote, and when she told him she was pregnant, he was very happy. "But, after discussing it with your parents, you said to me, 'Can you get an abortion? Or if you give birth, can we not get married?'"
In the end, after she expressed her disappointment, the pair got married. But Lee was indignant that his father had written that Wang had suffered for years with her. If that had been true, she pointed out, the couple wouldn't have had two more children. And they wouldn't have been able to keep up the lovey-dovey act in front of their friends. "He might be an actor, but I'm not," she said.
In 2019, Wang started putting pressure on her to agree to a divorce to allow him to "freely live the single life he wanted to live", Lee said.
In response to Wang's father writing that his son was a good man without misconduct, she shot back, "He didn't tell you about spending time with prostitutes, did he?"
She ended the letter by issuing him an ultimatum: "I would like Mr Wang Leehom to make a public apology before 3pm."
If he does not do so by 3pm on Sunday (Dec 19), she wrote, she will take legal action against Wang and his father, to protect herself from defamation.
