An online sex video featuring a popular young TV star has riveted the nation for more than a week now, much as Hilton's notorious clip seized the attention of Americans when it hit the Internet a few years ago.

But unlike the naughty American celebrity, the 19-year-old woman at the centre of Vietnam's sex scandal had cultivated a good-girl image. And unlike Hilton, Hoang Thuy Linh won't be able to capitalise on her newfound notoriety.

Thuy Linh's show has been cancelled and her career is over, capped by a tearful farewell on national television during which she apologised for disgracing her family and disappointing her fans, most of them high school girls.

Her fall from grace has highlighted the generational fault-lines in Vietnam, a sexually conservative culture within which women have been taught for centuries to remain chaste until marriage and stay true to one man - no matter how many times he cheats on them.

Like everything else in this economically booming country, ideas about sex and gender roles are quickly changing as satellite TV and the Internet bring Western influences to a society cut off by decades of war and economic isolation.

Sexual taboos
But for many in communist Vietnam, new ideas about free love are much harder to accept than the free market. And unlike men, women who break the old sexual taboos are not easily forgiven.

'Kids today are crazy,' said Nguyen Thi Khanh, 49, a Hanoi junior high school teacher. 'They often exceed the limits of morality. They have sex and fall in love when they're much too young.' In the old days, Khanh said, a woman who had sex before marriage would be ostracised - and rightfully so.

'A good girl must keep herself clean until she is married,' Khanh said. 'Thuy Linh should be condemned. If I ever see her again on TV, I will turn it off, for sure.' 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.

Watching secretly
Ever since, the video has been the talk of Vietnam, where people secretly watch it online at work, e-mail the Internet link to their friends and talk about it in the country's ubiquitous sidewalk cafes.

'Have you seen the clip yet?' has become a common greeting, to which the answer is almost invariably, 'Yes.' Members of Vietnam's National Assembly were overheard gossiping about it last week at the opening of the new legislative session.

Vietnam's state-owned television station VTV-3 promptly cancelled 'Vang Anh's Diaries' after broadcasting Thuy Linh's humiliating farewell on Oct 15.

'I made a mistake, a terrible mistake,' said the doe-faced teen, confessing that she hadn't been able to sleep because of the scandal. 'I apologise to you, my parents, my teachers and my friends.'

Defence
A few lonely voices sprang up in Thuy Linh's defence.

'She did it with her boyfriend in a private room,' said a blogger named Bocuhung. 'She did what people have been doing since they came into the world. Love is not wrong, but hurting people is.' In most newspapers and on blogs and Web sites, however, the video has become the target of jokes and condemnation.

VietnamNet, a popular online newspaper, said the episode underscored the 'dark side of globalisation' and warned that a flood of foreign influences 'threaten Vietnam's cultural foundation.' The scandal has disillusioned many of Thuy Linh's biggest fans, who have been talking about it nonstop.

'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.'

Sensitive subject
Premarital sex is now common among university students and even some high school students, said Minh, a 25-year-old Hanoi resident who wouldn't give his last name while discussing such a sensitive subject.

Many young people can forgive Thuy Linh for having sex, Minh said, but they can't forgive her for pretending to be something she wasn't.

'She's a hypocrite,' Minh said. 'On TV, she's a good girl. But in real life, she's nothing like her TV character.'

It is not clear how the video made it online. The young man in the clip has not been identified, and most of the public's wrath has been directed at Thuy Linh.

'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 scandal, Nguyet said, is certain to destroy Thuy Linh's career.

'Vietnam is changing quickly, but there's no way Thuy Linh will be forgiven,' Nguyet said. 'That will take another generation.' AP-TK-25-10-07 0038GMT