How the Kaohsiung Incident Contributed to Taiwan's Democratic Movement

How the Kaohsiung Incident Contributed 103 Chapter 5 How the Kaohsiung Incident Contributed to Taiwan’s Democratic Movement With the sentencing of the defendants to long prison terms, Taiwan’s authori- tarian regime appeared victorious. Taiwan then underwent at least three years of quite conservative and repressive rule under President Chiang Ching-kuo as well as General Wang Sheng 王昇, the director of the Political Warfare Department (the political commissars) in Taiwan’s military and a close confi- dant of Chiang Ching-kuo dating back to 1939 when Wang worked under Chiang Ching-kuo in Jiangxi 江西 Province. Wang became particularly important at the Fourth Plenum of the KMT’s Eleventh Central Committee, which met at the very time of the Kaohsiung Incident and the arrests, and remained very powerful until Chiang Ching-kuo believed he was setting up an alternative power center in the KMT. Wang finally lost power when he was exiled as ambas- sador to Paraguay on September 20, 1983.1 Taiwan’s government had hoped that the opening of its trials to public scru- tiny would demonstrate the validity of its legal system both domestically and internationally. However, as we have shown, this plan backfired. The so-called “violence” of the Kaohsiung Incident clearly came from the security forces, not the demonstrators. In addition, it also became clear in both Taiwan and over- seas that the security forces had used deprivation of sleep and even physical torture to gain the “confessions” of the defendants. And, from the transcripts of the trials published in The China Times and some other newspapers, it became very clear that the government’s cases against the defendants failed in all of the main military and civil trials, yet the verdicts took the “evidence” from the indictments—based on the forced confessions—and convicted the defendants without regard to what had transpired in court. Only in the case of Reverend Kao Chun-ming and his co-defendants, tried for concealing Shih Ming-teh, were the accused guilty as charged. The defendants in the two main trials also had to serve long sentences, which were especially severe in that they were not guilty of any crimes. A good 1 An excellent biography of Chiang Ching-kuo is Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo’s Son: Chiang Ching-kuo and the Revolutions in China and Taiwan (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2000). For a good biography of Wang Sheng, see Thomas A. Marks, Counterrevolution in China: Wang Sheng and the Kuomintang (London and Portland, Or: Frank Cass, 1998). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004315921_006 104 Chapter 5 comparison can be made with General Wang Hsi-ling 汪希苓, Director of the Intelligence Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense 國防部情報局. Wang had ordered the murder of Henry Liu 劉一良 (also known as Chiang Nan 江南), an American citizen living in the United States who was killed on October 14, 1984.2 A military court sentenced Wang Hsi-ling to life in prison, but he was given a nice specially-built four-room house at the Ching-mei prison, where many of the Kaohsiung Incident defendants were kept in much harsher condi- tions. In addition, Wang had another small house where he could receive female visitors. Wang was released within a few years and was honored at a huge banquet for his eightieth birthday.3 Compared to South Korea, which eventually democratized with many par- allels to Taiwan,4 the Kaohsiung Incident was non-violent and its punishments relatively light. In the commensurate Kwangju Uprising, South Korea’s military government killed 191 persons according to the official figures and estimates of the true numbers run much higher.5 Both the Kaohsiung Incident and the Kwangju Uprising were important to the later democratization of Taiwan and South Korea, though the former had a greater impact. In Taiwan, three different groups of people emerged from the arrests, imprisonment and trials associated with the Kaohisung Incident to contribute to Taiwan’s democratic movement and later democratization. The First Group: The Defendants The first group, the defendants themselves, had all been leaders of the dangwai movement. Their convictions in the clearly unfair trials made them martyrs as well as important activists. After their imprisonment ended, many became active in democratic politics and played leading roles in Taiwan’s democratization. These people included seven of the original eight defendants in the military court trial. Huang Hsin-chieh 黃信介 later became the third chairperson of the Democratic Progressive Party (October 30, 1988–January 20, 1992). He won 2 See preface. 3 Jacobs, Democratizing Taiwan, pp. 60–61, 272. 4 J. Bruce Jacobs, “Taiwan and South Korea: Comparing East Asia’s Two ‘Third-Wave’ Democracies,” Issues & Studies 43, no. 4 (December 2007), pp. 227–260. 5 J. Bruce Jacobs, “Two Key Events in the Democratisation of Taiwan and South Korea: The Kaohsiung Incident and the Kwangju Uprising,” International Review of Korea Studies 8, no. 1 (2011), pp. 50–51..

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