Taiwan passports with the wrong photo on them – Washington Dulles International Airport instead of Taoyuan International Airport in Taipei – will be scrapped and the country’s top consular official has stepped down.
The passport error was pointed out on social media after someone on Facebook spotted the Dulles image being used in place of the Taipei airport.
The mistake on roughly 200,000 passports led to head of Taiwan's Bureau of Consular Affairs Agnes Chen stepping down on Wednesday, Focus Taiwan reported.
The Central Engraving and Printing Plant, the contract printer, will take on the job of reprinting the passports at a cost of $2.67 million, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Focus Taiwan.
"On behalf of BOCA, I apologize to the public for the major oversight and will take full administrative responsibility for the incident," Chen said in a news conference.
Authorities said Taiwan's top envoy to Canada, Kung Chung-chen, who led the bureau when the new passport was designed, has been recalled.
Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would have to recall 285 passports already issued to residents, The Telegraph reported.
The BBC News reported that the image took off on the Asian micro-blogging site Weibo, with many critical of the error.
"This guy doesn't even know how his own airport looks like?" one user on Weibo said, per BBC.
"Taiwanese people went to sleep and woke up as Americans," another Weibo user commented.
The architecture website ArchDaily reported in 2015 that the Taiwan airport, constructed in 1979 by Taiwanese structural engineer T. Y. Lin, was "influenced by Eero Saarinen's Washington Dulles International Airport …"
Officials reported that the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport topped 40 million passengers in 2016.
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