Kaohsiung Incident (Formosa Incident)

On February 28, 1980, Lin Yi-hsiung (林義雄) was waiting for his trial at the Jingmei Military Detention Center in Taipei. That day, Taipei police and intelligence personnel maintained positions outside his home on Xinyi Road from morning until evening, yet no one went inside. By dusk, someone finally entered to find that his 60-year-old mother, Lin You A-mei, had been stabbed 13 times and was lying on the basement floor; his 7-year-old twin daughters Lin Liangzun and Lin Tingjun had each been stabbed once through the chest and back, dying instantly. His 9-year-old elder daughter Lin Huanzun had been stabbed six times — she happened to be wearing her schoolbag on her back, and miraculously survived.¹

That day was the 33rd anniversary of the February 28 Incident. The perpetrator has never been identified.

30-second overview: On December 10, 1979 — International Human Rights Day — the Formosa Magazine organization held a rally in Kaohsiung that resulted in a clash between protesters and police, after which more than 150 people were arrested.² The public military trial of 1980, which the Nationalist government intended to use to legally crush the opposition, unexpectedly allowed the democratic demands of dangwai (黨外) activists to be heard across Taiwan for the first time through media coverage. The young lawyers who defended the accused — Chen Shui-bian, Frank Hsieh, Su Tseng-chang, and Chang Chun-hsiung — would later include a president and three premiers. Of the eight defendants, seven later served as chair or acting chair of the Democratic Progressive Party.

A Magazine — and the Precursor to a Party

At the end of 1978, a structural rupture opened in U.S.-Taiwan relations: the United States severed diplomatic ties with the Republic of China. Chiang Ching-kuo immediately issued an emergency decree, indefinitely postponing the already-scheduled supplemental legislative elections. The dangwai (opposition) figures lost their most important channel for political participation.

They turned to publishing a magazine.

In June 1979, Formosa (美麗島) magazine was formally established, with Huang Hsin-chieh as publisher, Hsu Hsin-liang as president, and Shih Ming-teh as general manager — the name taken from a song of the same title by Li Shuangze. The 61 board members recruited dangwai figures from across Taiwan² — from the radical Taiwan independence advocate Shih Ming-teh to the relatively moderate Kang Ning-hsiang — constituting essentially a political party without a name.

After the magazine launched in August, its sales grew steadily. By October it had established service offices in eleven cities across Taiwan.³ The authorities became increasingly anxious. Beginning in September, incidents of sabotage and disruption occurred. On November 29, Huang Hsin-chieh's Taipei residence and the Kaohsiung service office were simultaneously attacked with axes; the Pingtung service office was attacked by someone with a firearm, and one staff member was slashed.

The magazine organization had originally planned to hold a rally in Kaohsiung on December 10, International Human Rights Day; they received a series of threatening phone calls demanding cancellation, but decided to proceed as planned.

December 10, 1979 — Kaohsiung's Daganpu Circle

Shortly after 6 PM, a march departed from the service office. The originally planned venue at Fulin Park had been sealed off; the procession redirected toward the large traffic circle at the intersection of Zhongshan and Zhongzheng Roads. Tens of thousands of people gathered.

⚠️ Contested view
Who struck first that night remains disputed. Official accounts accused dangwai figures of deliberately inciting disorder; the dangwai side and multiple eyewitnesses described seeing people in plainclothes wearing party badges infiltrating the crowd to throw eggs and create confusion, with riot police gradually tightening an encirclement and deploying tear gas, with violent conflict between the two sides erupting only after armored vehicles drove into the crowd. Story Studio's reporting recorded multiple eyewitnesses describing infiltrators striking first.⁴ In total, approximately 100 police and military were injured, and people on the dangwai side were also injured.²

The clash continued into the small hours of the morning. The following day, media reporting was uniformly one-sided — calling it a "violent incident" and "rebellion."

26 Days of Flight

Before dawn on December 13, a synchronized island-wide mass arrest began. Chen Chu, Lin Yi-hsiung, Lu Hsiu-lien, Chang Chun-hung, and other dangwai elites were arrested one by one; Huang Hsin-chieh was arrested on the morning of December 14, after the Legislative Yuan secretly gave its consent.

Only Shih Ming-teh escaped.

He became that evening's top news story. The government issued an arrest warrant; the reward rose quickly from NT$500,000 to NT$1,000,000,⁵ and his face appeared on newspapers, television broadcasts, and telephone poles everywhere. Shih hid in a network of sympathizers, and also asked dentist Chang Wen-ying to alter his appearance, attempting to change his features. Pastor Kao Jun-ming of the Presbyterian Church, Elder Lin Wen-chen, and others who helped conceal him were also later imprisoned for this.

Twenty-six days later, on January 8, 1980, Shih Ming-teh was captured in Taipei.

✦ "Three days later, on that frigid early morning of December 13, Shih Ming-teh made a remarkable escape from agents who had closely surrounded his home — foiling the 'Anhe Plan' that the intelligence apparatus had laid out in advance." — United Daily News (2024)⁵

The arrests ultimately swept up 152 to 156 people.⁴

Military Trial: The Defendants Said What the Kuomintang Least Wanted Heard

In February 1980, military prosecutors filed charges against eight individuals — Shih Ming-teh, Huang Hsin-chieh, Lin Yi-hsiung, Lu Hsiu-lien, Chang Chun-hung, Chen Chu, Yao Chia-wen, and Lin Hung-hsuan — under Article 2, Clause 1 of the Punishment of Treason Act: attempting to overthrow the government through illegal means and taking concrete steps toward that end, colloquially known as "Article 2-1," carrying a mandatory death sentence.²

Originally, this should have been a case handled behind closed doors and disposed of quickly. But overseas Taiwanese launched a massive lobbying effort in the U.S. Congress; major media including the Central News Agency and the BBC focused their attention; even the PRC embassy in Washington issued a statement supporting the dangwai figures. International pressure forced Chiang Ching-kuo's government into an unexpected decision: an open trial.⁶

On March 18, 1980, the first courtroom at Jingmei Detention Center convened, conducting hearings over nine consecutive days.⁷

Chen Wan-jen, who had spent years involved in Taiwan's democracy movement, later wrote: "In those courtroom confrontations of the 'Formosa Incident Trial,' more and more Taiwanese people came to understand that the dangwai figures were not bandits or pirates — their goal was simply to fight for democracy."⁸²

Shih Ming-teh stated in court that "Taiwan should be independent — and in fact has already been independent for more than thirty years; its current name is the Republic of China," and listed "the ban on new political parties, the ban on new newspapers, martial law, and the perpetual legislature as the four great obstacles to Taiwan's democratization."² These words spread across Taiwan through media coverage, with effects the government had not anticipated at all.

On April 5, the military verdict was announced: Shih Ming-teh received life imprisonment; Huang Hsin-chieh received 14 years; the other six each received 12 years. Under international pressure, Shih Ming-teh's death sentence had been commuted.⁶⁷

The Lin Family Massacre: February 28, 1980

Nine days before the military trial began, the events described at the opening of this article occurred at Lin Yi-hsiung's home.

That house on Taipei's Xinyi Road was under surveillance by intelligence personnel throughout the entire day of the incident. Not a single person entered. ¹

This detail gives the phrase "the case remains unsolved" a weight that is difficult to articulate.

Lin Yi-hsiung did not know his family had been killed while in prison — he was not informed until two days later. He was unable to attend the funeral. His eldest daughter Lin Huanzun later lived in the United States with her mother, Fang Su-min. The Lin family massacre became the deepest mark on Lin Yi-hsiung's lifelong political action, and one of the heaviest unresolved cases in Taiwan's transitional justice (台灣轉型正義, plain text + Chinese parenthesis) process.¹

📝 Curator's Note
Why the Lin family massacre occurred on the anniversary of the February 28 Incident has always been a mystery. Some believe it was a deliberate date selection; others believe it was coincidence. During the Taiwan White Terror (台灣白色恐怖, plain text + Chinese parenthesis) era, how many things "happened" this way — the answer has never been something a court ruling could provide.

One Defense Table — One President and Three Premiers Emerged

The fifteen defense lawyers who took on the Formosa Incident trial in 1980 were essentially staking their political lives on the case. In that era, defending "traitors" was itself a declaration of political stance.²

They were: Chen Shui-bian, Frank Hsieh (Hsieh Chang-ting), Su Tseng-chang, Chang Chun-hsiung, Chiang Peng-chien, You Ching, Chang Cheng-hsiung, Kuo Chi-jen, Cheng Sheng-chu, and several others.

What these people went on to do:

1. September 28, 1986 — The Democratic Progressive Party was founded; Chiang Peng-chien was elected its first party chair
2. May 20, 1990 — Lee Teng-hui pardoned the Formosa Incident political prisoners
3. March 18, 2000 — Chen Shui-bian was elected President of the Republic of China, the first non-Kuomintang president
4. 2000–2008 — Chang Chun-hsiung, Frank Hsieh, and Su Tseng-chang successively served as Premier
5. 2019–2023 — Su Tseng-chang again served as Premier under Tsai Ing-wen's presidency

Chen Shui-bian had taken on the defense of Huang Hsin-chieh. The person he defended later became the DPP's third party chair.

Meanwhile, of those eight defendants, all but Lin Hung-hsuan subsequently served as DPP chair or acting chair after their release. Lu Hsiu-lien later served two terms as Vice President; Chen Chu (陳菊, plain text + Chinese parenthesis) served 12 years as Kaohsiung Mayor before becoming President of the Control Yuan; Yao Chia-wen served as President of the Examination Yuan.⁹

Academia Sinica research fellow Wu Nai-teh analyzed: "The years after the Formosa Incident were also the period when the Kuomintang's authoritarian regime was most vulnerable. Withdrawal from the United Nations and U.S.-China diplomatic normalization stripped the Kuomintang's authoritarian system of its legitimacy; since recovering the mainland was no longer possible, the legislature would need to be fully reformed according to the constitution and Three Principles of the People, and martial law would have to be lifted." (BBC Chinese, 2019)⁹

📝 Curator's Note
Taiwan's democratic transition followed a very peculiar path: the person who ultimately pushed for martial law's end was Chiang Ching-kuo himself, not street pressure that directly forced his downfall. The Formosa Incident opened a contradictory process — it sent nearly all the dangwai elite to prison, while simultaneously bringing Taiwanese people for the first time into public discussion around "I want to vote, I want to freely publish newspapers, I want genuine elections."

Democratic Ripples: The Echoes of the 1980s

After the Formosa Incident, the families of the imprisoned and the defense lawyers stepped into politics to fill the void left by the incarcerated politicians. In the 1981 county and city mayoral elections, Fang Su-min (Lin Yi-hsiung's wife), Hsu Rong-shu (Chang Chun-hung's wife), Chen Shui-bian, and others entered the race as family members or lawyers, generating even greater opposition energy.⁸

This path ultimately led to:

• September 28, 1986: the Democratic Progressive Party announced its founding at the Grand Hotel Taipei — while martial law had not yet been lifted
• July 1987: Taiwan lifted its 38-year martial law
• 1988: Press restrictions lifted; Lee Teng-hui assumed the presidency
• 1990: Formosa Incident political prisoners received pardons
• 1996: Taiwan's first direct presidential election

The event's influence extended into the cultural sphere. A Reporter book review notes that multiple writers in cultural circles turned toward local concerns and human rights literature after the Formosa Incident, becoming an important impetus for the local literature movement of the 1980s.¹⁰

Shih Ming-teh's Later Years: Another Face of a Hero

Shih Ming-teh served 10 years in prison for the Formosa Incident, spent his most important years behind bars, and upon release became DPP chair — described by many as "Taiwan's Nelson Mandela."¹¹

Then, in 2006, he did something that turned almost all his former comrades against him.

He concluded that then-president Chen Shui-bian was involved in corruption. Through a NT$100-per-person contribution model, he called on a million people to donate, launching the "Million People Anti-Corruption Movement against Bian," leading the "Red Shirt Army" in continuous sit-ins on Ketagalan Boulevard for months. He broke with Chen Shui-bian and drew a near-complete line between himself and the entire DPP.

⚠️ Contested view
Shih Ming-teh's supporters argue his stance throughout his life was consistent — fighting authoritarians, regardless of what color their clothes were. His critics argue that his anti-Bian movement objectively helped the Kuomintang return to power, betraying the ideals he had once gone to prison for. BBC Chinese records the words he wrote in 2019: "Forty years have passed. Today's Kuomintang are not the oppressors of those years, yet the hostility remains. Today's DPP members are few of them the fighters of those days, yet the hatred still burns."⁹ Shih Ming-teh passed away on January 15, 2024, at the age of 83.⁹¹¹

Among the many stories in Taiwan's politics, Shih Ming-teh's life trajectory is a rare one — he was not a symbol; he was a living contradiction.

Formosa Station: A Name Walked Through by 18,000 People Daily

The Kaohsiung MRT's orange-red line interchange station, built on the former Daganpu Circle site, is named "Formosa Boulevard Station" (美麗島站). Inside the station, a dome of stained glass called "The Dome of Light" has a diameter of approximately 30 meters and an area of approximately 660 square meters — one of the Kaohsiung MRT's most representative works of public art.¹²

Approximately 18,000 passengers walk under that dome daily, most of them just changing lines.¹²

When the students of the Sunflower Movement occupied the Legislative Yuan in 2014, they invoked "the people's right to resist injustice." That lineage traces all the way back to the evening of December 10, 1979, when a group of people at a traffic circle said "lift martial law, allow new political parties" — and received in return tear gas and more than ten years in prison.

The perpetrator of the 1980 Lin family massacre has never been found.

📝 Curator's Note
The most difficult part of Taiwan's transitional justice (台灣轉型正義, plain text + Chinese parenthesis) is not holding accountable those who "did something," but reconstructing the scene of those who "said nothing." Who exactly set off the clashes of the Formosa Incident? Who was the perpetrator of the Lin family massacre? The answers to these questions may never be found in a courtroom — but they remain unavoidable challenges for a society attempting to honestly face its own past.

References