Ko Chi-hua (
Born in Tsoying, Kaohsiung, in 1929, Ko was 73.
After graduating from the English Department at National Taiwan Normal University, Ko taught at Kaohsiung Girls High School (
In 1958, he edited an English Manual for Junior High School (
The grammar guide has been reprinted more than 100 times since then.
Royalties from the book were the main source of financial support for his family when he was serving the second of two prison sentences during the White Terror period.
Ko served his first prison term after being convicted of being a "leftist" after four secret police agents searched his home in Kaohsiung and found a copy of Karl Marx's Dialectical Materialism.
Ko, a 22-year-old English teacher at the time, was first sent to a Garrison Command detention center in Taipei to undergo "thought reform" for eight months, before being transferred to Green Island prison.
He later sought redress for the illegal detention which had followed his conviction at a secret trial. On Jan. 19, 2000, the Kaohsiung District Court awarded him record compensation of NT$3.08 million for the 616 days he spent behind bars from July 1951 to April 1953.
While welcoming what they described as "justice delayed," Ko's family said at the time, "Nothing can compensate for the loss of his youth in jail."
Several years later, however, Ko was arrested again in 1961 on sedition charges and jailed until 1976.
During this second term of imprisonment, his wife, Tsai A-li (
Ko also wrote two collections of poetry, The Calling of the Earth (鄉土的呼喚), and Mother's Sorrowful Wishes (母親的悲願), as well as the partly autobiographical Taiwan Prison Island (台灣監獄島).
He suffered from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease in his later years.
Yang Bi-chun (
"Mr. Ko became very famous with his popular English textbook New English Grammar when I was very young," Yang said.
"Of course, I was one of the book's readers as I grew up as well. Back in those day, this textbook was the Bible for most students who were learning English and trying to pass all kinds of entrance exams for high schools and universities," he added.
Yang was himself jailed in Green Island Prison (
Yang said that Ko was the inspiration behind his own publication of a book on Taiwan's history.
"When I was released in 1977," he said, "I had a chance to visit Mr. Ko and he encouraged me in my desire to publish a book about Taiwan's history. That was why I published my book A Brief History of Taiwan (簡明台灣史) in 1987."
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