Ong Iok-tek

He also played a leading role in garnering support for the Taiwan independence movement within Japan. As a student he had joined Thomas Liao's Republic of Taiwan Provisional Government [zh] but became dissatisfied with it after two years. He established the Taiwan Youth Association [zh] in 1960 and published the organization's influential monthly Taiwan Seinen in Japanese (later for a time in Chinese) and Formosan Quarterly in English. The Taiwan Youth Association later changed its name to the Taiwan Youth Independence League. In the 1970s he was a leader in the campaign to secure compensation for the 200,000 Taiwanese who had served as soldiers under the Imperial Japanese military. In 1982 he served as a committee member of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs.

He resumed his studies in May 1950, and after completing his Ph.D. in 1969 at the University of Tokyo, he later taught Taiwanese at Meiji University in 1974.

He was born in Tainan Prefecture (modern-day Tainan), during Japanese rule, of a prominent family. He attended Tokyo Imperial University in 1943 but the ongoing World War II compelled him to return to Taiwan after a year. Following the war and handover of Taiwan he took a critical attitude toward the Kuomintang, one accentuated by the killing of his brother, Wang Yu-lin [zh], a Tokyo-educated prosecutor, in the February 28 Incident. His own life threatened by the new regime, he fled to Japan in 1949 and spent the rest of his life there in addition to various other places.

Ông Io̍k-tek (王育德, Taiwanese: Ông Io̍k-tek; pinyin: Wáng Yùdé; Wade–Giles: Wang Yü-te; 30 January 1924–9 September 1985) was a Taiwanese scholar and early leader of the Taiwan independence movement. He is considered to be an authority on the Min Nan language family and the Taiwanese language.