Koo Kwang-ming (???), an advisor to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidents and founder of the pro-independence Taiwan New Constitution Foundation, has died at the age of 97.
Koo died, surrounded by family, at 8:55 a.m. Monday at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, his foundation said in a statement, which did not specify a cause of death.
Plans for a public memorial service will be announced at a later date, the statement said.
Koo was born in Taipei in 1926 to a prominent family from Changhua’s Lukang District.
In 1947, he enrolled in the political science department at National Taiwan University (NTU) and was later elected as president of the NTU student government.
His life took a decisive turn in 1949, after an incident in which a group of NTU and Taiwan Provincial College (now National Taiwan Normal University) students were stopped on their bicycles and beaten up by the police.
After the altercation, students protested by surrounding a local police station. Later that year, the authorities responded by raiding the two schools’ dormitories to arrest the suspected leaders of the protest.
Koo, who was in Hong Kong at the time on vacation, received word that military police had come to his home looking for him, and was urged by family members not to return to Taiwan.
Listening to his family, Koo and his first wife settled in Japan, where he resided for more than two decades, working as a businessman while funding political activists and helping to found the Japan branch of the World United Formosans for Independence (WUFI).
In 1972, Koo was invited back to Taiwan for a secret meeting with then-Premier Chiang Ching-kuo (???), during which he said he urged the government to allow space for local opposition parties and abandon its “delusional dream” of retaking mainland China.
On his return to Japan, however, Koo’s decision to meet with Chiang was denounced as a “surrender” by his comrades in the independence movement, leading to his expulsion from the WUFI.
Koo ultimately returned to Taiwan permanently in 1975 because, he later said, “the key issue in the independence movement is not promoting it internationally, but in Taiwan itself.”
In Taiwan, Koo founded and ran a large fishing company, while continuing his political activism and collaborating with pro-independence intellectuals to launch three political and news magazines.
In the early 2000s, Koo, by then a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), served as an advisor to DPP President Chen Shui-bian (???) — a position he later reprised under President Tsai Ing-wen (???).
After an unsuccessful run for the DPP chairmanship in 2008, which he lost to Tsai, Koo founded the Taiwan Brain Trust think tank and the Taiwan New Constitution Foundation, which advocates drafting a new Constitution as a step toward de jure independence.
Even as he achieved the status of an elder statesman, Koo sparked controversy on several occasions with remarks that were widely criticized as sexist.
Referring to Tsai, Koo questioned whether the DPP should be led by an unmarried woman, and later complained that a person “in a skirt” was unfit to serve as commander-in-chief.
On cross-Taiwan Strait issues, meanwhile, Koo had long advocated for the concept of a “federation of brothers,” under which the two sides could enjoy close and mutually beneficial relations if China would recognize Taiwan’s independence.
One of Koo’s most memorable appearances in recent years occurred in 2016, when, as a guest at Tsai’s first presidential inauguration, he refused to rise for the Republic of China national anthem.
Over the course of his life, Koo married four times and had three sons, one of whom — Richard Koo — is chief economist of Japan’s Nomura Research Institute.
News of Koo’s death on Monday was met with an outpouring of tributes from figures in the DPP.
In a statement issued by the Presidential Office, Tsai offered condolences to Koo’s family and expressed gratitude for his lifelong efforts to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty, his promotion of free and democratic values, and his contributions to Taiwan’s localization movement.
Writing on Facebook, Vice President Lai Ching-te (???) called Koo’s passing “a loss for the nation,” and pledged to continue protecting Taiwan’s democracy, peace and prosperity in his honor.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel