A surgeon who brought ECMO to Taiwan, then quit the hospital to run Taipei as an independent - and won twice. Built a third party to crack the island's two-party lock, ran for president, came third, and landed in a corruption probe that put him in detention for over a year.
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About this person
Ko Wen-je was born 6 August 1959. He trained in intensive care, earned a doctorate from National Taiwan University in 2002, and became a transplant surgeon and professor at the university hospital - standardizing organ transplant protocols and pioneering extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in Taiwan. By the time he left medicine he was already known for frequent media commentary on politics and society. In 2014 he ran for Taipei mayor as an independent, beat the Kuomintang candidate, and won re-election in 2018. He founded the Taiwan People's Party in 2019, chaired it, and mounted a 2024 presidential bid as a "third way" against the entrenched DPP and KMT - he finished third. In August 2024 prosecutors detained him over a property development deal from his mayoral years, indicted him on bribery and corruption charges in December, and held him incommunicado until bail was granted in September 2025 at NT$70 million. His supporters called it political persecution and took to the streets.
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