Why am I telling these stories? This year marks 38 years since the end of martial law. Taiwan has finally lived longer after dictatorship than under it.

Liu Yaoting was executed in 1954, leaving behind his wife and infant twin daughters. Decades later, his daughter Liu Meini tells their story in Letters That Could Not Be Delivered—a book about love, loss, and the scars of Taiwan’s White Terror. www.twreporter.org/a/bookreview...

But during trial, a former colleague, Wu Jin, turned himself in and gave testimony. Based on this “confession,” Liu Yaoting and others were resentenced to death.

With its leaders gone, the Da’an Printing House branch was soon exposed. At first, Liu Yaoting was sentenced to 5 years for “knowing that the press secretly printed materials at night but failing to report it.”

By late 1952, security forces encircled Lukou for days. Starving, Liu Xuekun left to seek food at a farmhouse and was shot dead on the spot. In the sweep that followed—known as the Luku Incident—dozens were killed and hundreds arrested, one of White Terror’s largest crackdowns.

In Oct. 1949, Liu Xuekun recruited a group of workers into the underground party. As repression deepened, both he and Lü retreated into the hills of Lukou. Lü died there in 1950 from a snakebite.

After the Feb. 28 Incident, workers’ organizations in Taipei grew rapidly. In 1949, Liu Xuekun (alias Liu Shusheng) and writer Lü Heruo led the Da’an Printing House branch, also called the “TL branch,” which secretly printed underground books and pamphlets.

In December 2018, the Transitional Justice Commission formally overturned Wei’s conviction and sentence.

Decades later, in 1999, his family applied for state compensation.

In 2001, the board approved: while Wei had attended meetings and helped print documents, there was no evidence of actual rebellion or concrete actions to overthrow the government.

On January 29, 1954, Wei executed by a firing squad. He was 23 years old.

After almost 11 months in prison, In September 1953, the Taiwan Provincial Security Command sentenced him to death, accusing him of “intending to overthrow the government by illegal means.”

His property was confiscated. A small allowance was left to his family.

The government accused Wei of participating in a group called the “TL Branch.” (More on them in the future.)

The court said he attended meetings where members were warned to keep their printing activities strictly secret.

In October 1952, Wei was arrested.

According to the court, he was accused of printing so-called seditious materials: the Founding Documents of the PRC, its National Anthem, and political news articles.

When he was arrested, Wei was working as a government clerk in Nantou. But he was questioned for a stint working at a printing press in Taipei.

He was born in 1931 in Nantou county, the only landlocked county in Taiwan. He had an elementary school education.

Wow, I didn’t know! I’ll try to go pay my respects sometime.

Oh! Definitely! I go biking up there a lot, but normally in the early morning, haha. But let’s go for a hike or a hang or something soon!

That a KMT general and a leftist youth rest not far from each other, each remembered by state memorials, captures Taiwan’s layered present—
a democracy still grappling with contested memories.