Fei Li — better known as Crown Magazine founder Ping Hsin-tao — hosted a weekly half-hour Western pop music program on the Air Force Broadcasting Network beginning in 1958. His coinage of the term ‘hot music’ (熱門音樂) proved so popular that other stations began ordering music materials and records directly from the United States.
As U.S. troop numbers in Taiwan grew after the Korean War, the Ministry of National Defense established the ‘Voice of China-America’ segment on military radio in 1955. In 1957, the U.S. military took over independent production, launching Armed Forces Radio Taiwan — which became ICRT after 1979.
In 1957, Asia Records — Taiwan’s first record store, based in Tainan — invited singer Wen Hsia to record the island’s first LP, featuring tracks including ‘Drifting Woman,’ ‘Hawaiian Night,’ and ‘Man’s Revenge,’ which became a nationwide sensation.
From 1957 onward, small record-pressing factories proliferated in the Sanchong area, with forty to fifty facilities clustered there by the late 1950s and 1960s. Specialist bootleg pressing plants also emerged in Taipei, including Línglíng, Electric Tower, Taiwan Sound, Moon Globe, and more than a dozen others.
The journal Modern Poetry, founded in 1953, championed an intellectual, Western-influenced approach to verse. In 1956, the more radical Modernist School was established, provoking backlash from other poets and sparking Taiwan’s first postwar debate over modern poetry in the pages of Literary Review.
The U.S. Taiwan Defense Command was established in 1955 following the signing of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, reporting directly to the U.S. Pacific Command. Headquartered at Yuanshan in Taipei, it was dissolved on April 26, 1979, following the severance of U.S.–ROC diplomatic relations.
After three years of fighting since 1950, the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed on July 27, 1953, by three parties — the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and the United Nations — temporarily halting hostilities and establishing the Korean Demilitarized Zone.
Today’s World was founded on March 15, 1952, and ran until issue 598 in 1980. Established by the U.S. State Department as a Chinese-language publication for the Far East, it was widely read for its quality coverage of science news, world affairs, social trends, and literary content.
From 1951 to 1965, a total of US$1.48 billion in American aid flowed to Taiwan, stabilizing agricultural and industrial development and guiding long-term economic growth. U.S. aid acted as an invisible hand in helping Taiwan build its economic miracle.
Taiwan’s 1950s record industry, centered in Taipei, operated across three modes: bootleg manufacturing, original production, and import retail. Starting in 1951, small family-run record factories began appearing, including Lìgē, Asia, Queen, and Fengming.