Can Transitional Justice in Taiwan Be Part of Pop Culture?

This is a translation from the original 陳文成不是孤魂野鬼，但轉型正義不用怕通俗化 by Ho Ming-hsiu (何明修), a professor of sociology at National Taiwan University. Originally published by Voicettank. Translation by Tim Smith.

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Taiwanese grocery giant PX-Mart (全聯) stirred up controversy recently with a TV commercial timed to Taiwan’s traditional Ghost Month celebrations.

In this particular clip, there’s a sophisticated, refined looking man who is telling a monologue in Taiwanese, eloquently speaking about his gratitude for the Ghost Month holiday, so he can “meet those unknown souls who died as ‘wondering ghosts.’” In Taiwan, wondering ghosts refer to souls whose deaths are unresolved, or people without a proper burial.

This 65-second clip shows a classroom setting, and the time is shown in 1981. PX-Mart’s social media pages such as Facebook and Instagram indicated that the man in commercial was born in 1950 and attended National Taiwan University from 1968-1972—all of which just about says this “wondering ghost” is none other than Prof. Chen Wen-cheng, a professor allegedly assassinated by the KMT authoritarian state in 1981, but whose murder has not received justice. 

PX-Mart has often been criticized by labor rights groups for its poor treatment of employees, such as in the case of overworked employees dying from overwork and other Basic Labor Law violations. Here, labor groups are crying foul, criticizing the sweatshop PX-Mart has no right to “exploit Chen Wen-cheng.”

Perhaps it’s because of this wave of criticism that PX-Mart had hastily pulled the commercial and declared that the “depicted man in the clip was not based on any particular person in real life. PX-Mart welcomes everyone and does not comment on politics. We hope that all parties will not draw conclusions from this commercial.” 

The disclaimer, of course, just makes PX-Mart look even more guilty as charged, not to mention damages the freedom of expression of its creative team. Observation of Ghost Month is simply a folk custom in Taiwan, and worshippers hardly consider the tradition from the point of view of those being remembered or honored. To tell a story from the side of the “ghosts,” and to shed light on a man who still awaits justice so he can rest in peace, is definitely wildly imaginative in Taiwan. But while PX-Mart claims to stay out of politics, pulling the commercial is very much ironically a political decision.  

Nevertheless, Prof. Chen deserves to be remembered.

Prof. Chen Wen-cheng (photo courtesy of Chen Wen-cheng Foundation Facebook page)

In July 1981, Chen Wen-cheng, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, had come back to Taiwan and was subsequently taken in for questioning by the Garrison Command, Taiwan’s secret police. The following morning, his body was found on the campus of National Taiwan University. The media at the time, which was controlled by the state, brazenly declared that Chen had “killed himself out of guilt.” 

This political murder came after the 1980 Lin I-hsiung murders (Lin, an anti-KMT activist, had his house broken into and his mother and two young daughters killed) and before the 1984 Chiang Nan Incident (Chiang Nan, an author who published a biography of dictator President Chiang Ching-kuo, was murdered in California by gang members with ties to the KMT). Prof. Chen died when he was just 31 years old, and his murder has not been official solved until this day.

Transitional justice through popular media

While the murder is a grave crime, a commercial in mass media like PX-Mart’s has potential to open a different path for the public to be more aware of Taiwan’s history and transitional justice issues.

Roughly speaking, transitional justice is about compensating and bringing justice to the large-scale infringement of human rights, restoring historical records to reflect the truth, and giving reparations to survivors of the repression and political arrests, and punishing the perpetrators of such crimes during Taiwan’s martial law period from 1950 to 1987. 

In Taiwan, transitional justice is an unfinished task. Even though Taiwan has declared February 28th a day of peaceful remembrance for the 228 Massacre, and many victims of political reprisals and kangaroo court sentencings during the martial law period have received some monetary compensation, there has yet to be any perpetrators convicted and punished for their participation in these human rights abuses. Transitional justice has progressed slowly because the issue is often seen as confined to the realm of politics, which should only be handled by political parties, and not something intimately related to everyone in Taiwan’s society.

When in 2011 NTU students launched a movement to set up a memorial plaque for Dr. Chen Wen-cheng, not only did the conservative school administration opposed such a move, there were skepticism from many faculty members as well. NTU instructors who taught near the site of Chen’s death did not want a plaque, saying things like “girls are afraid of ghosts.” NTU professors treated Chen Wen-cheng as a ghost, no doubt reflecting the ignorance of these university professors; yet what’s more important is that this is representative of the general public’s knowledge of the murder.  They convey the attitude that the Chen Wen-cheng murder case is a scary and ominous thing. It’s best not talked about. With this kind of attitude, it’s only too easy for the public to shun Chen Wen-cheng and the human rights issues it represents. 

The advertisement is one of many kinds of pop culture products. It is a medium by which everyone is brought closer to the subject matter, in this case the past. It’s possible that many people’s understanding of the atrocities carried out by the Nazis came from watching the movies “Schindler’s List” and “Life is Beautiful.” Similarly, people’s impressions of Nelson Mandela were informed by the movie “Invictus.” In recent years, South Korea came out with two box office hits, “A Taxi Driver” and “1987: When the Day Comes,” two movies whose contents describe the difficult struggle for democracy (such as the Gwangju Uprising) in the face of South Korea’s former, violent martial law government under Chun Doo-Hwan. 

Perhaps one day in the future, Taiwanese people will also much more deeply understand the past abuses and injustice against their own human rights, and will come to grips with the struggles for their hard-won democracy. With this goal in mind, pop culture depictions of history are a direction worth encouraging, as long as these creative endeavors are respectful of a precise understanding of this very solemn topic.  

(Feature photo from PX-Mart Ghost Month commercial)