In 1978, a man named “Hsu Yi-wen” published “A Modest Proposal for Establishing a Fourth Central Parliament” in The Generation magazine, later reprinted as a pamphlet. He criticized the Legislative Yuan and the National Assembly, whose members had not stood for re-election in thirty years, calling them the “Ten-Thousand-Year Parliament,” and attacked forcefully the Chiang family’s dictatorial, anti-democratic, and anti-human-rights measures — and narrowly escaped arrest once again.

While Shih Ming Te was imprisoned for the Kaohsiung Incident, the authorities inhumanely deported his American wife, Linda Gail Arrigo, refused to let her re-enter the country to visit him in prison, and even forbade them to correspond.

March 18, 1980, was the first day of the Formosa Military Trial.

Shih Kuo-tsui was a renowned practitioner of Chinese medicine, skilled in bonesetting and therapeutic massage, and a devout Catholic. Shih Ming Te was the fourth child of Shih Kuo-tsui and his second wife, Chen Ying. He had three elder brothers, Shih Ming-cheng, Shih Ming-ho, and Shih Ming-hsiung; a younger sister, Shih Ming-chu; and a younger brother, Shih Ming-hsin. He was born in the Shih family home on Daren Road in Yanchengpu.