(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-01-24 20:38

A Vietnamese woman searching for her father worked at his home in Taiwan for seven months without realising who he was before the relationship came to light, her father and police said Tuesday.

An undated handout photo, released January 12, by the Kinmen Police Bureau, shows Vietnamese Tran Thi Kham with her father Tsai Han-chao in Kinmen. Tran -- who travelled to Taiwan looking for her father -- worked at his home in Taiwan for seven months without realising who he was before the relationship came to light. [Agencies]

Tran Thi Kham, 40, travelled to Taiwan in 2005 hoping to find her biological father, who fell in love with her Vietnamese mother in Hong Kong in 1967, police said.

Tran's mother became pregnant but was forced to return home for family reasons. She died two months after giving birth to Tran, leaving the baby an engraved gold ring and a photo of her father, who did not know she existed.

Giving his reaction to the meeting, Tran's father, Tsai Han-chao, told the local TVBS cable news channel: "Life's ups and downs are just like television drama. How could I have ever dreamed that she is my daughter? I can't stop crying when we were finally united."

Tran was hired by Tsai in Taipei county to look after his paralysed wife and was reassigned by an agency to a family on the Kinmen island seven months later, after the woman died.

After arriving in Kinmen, Tran realised that she had left a bag containing her father's ring and photo in her ex-employer's home and asked the local police for help, the police in Kinmen said.

When Tsai opened the bag, he immediately recognised the items he had given his girlfriend.

He wasted no time flying to Kinmen for a tearful meeting with his daughter.

"This is incredible and really touching to see the father and daughter get together after all these years," said policeman Ku Ker-ya.

Ku said that DNA testing had confirmed Tran's parentage and she returned to Vietnam last week to deal with legal documents.