[7][8] Despite the ROC's attempts to cover-up the incident, the massacre sparked political outrage, and partially contributed to the end of the 38-year long period of martial law; it had been in place since the Kuomintang's exodus from mainland China in May 1949.

[14][15][16] In the following spring, Chao instructed the 158 Division Commander, Major-general Gong Li (龔力少將) to construct two propaganda walls—one 3.2m high and 20m long on Dadan Island, and the other on Erdan Island—with slogans proclaiming "Three Principles of the People Unify China" shining with neon lights at night until July 1995.

[26] In mid-July 1986, General Chao inspected the outlying islets of Lieyu, and noticed that the amphibious reconnaissance battalion (ARB-101, 海龍蛙兵) took in an unknown person swimming near Dadan after the local garrison failed to expel him away.

[36][37] A ROC military agent traced Chang's child after school to locate their home in Washington, D.C. until finally violated the federal witness protection program, further leading to the confrontation of Director Dean with General Hau.

As a seasonal heavy fog appeared on the coast and gradually turned clear in the afternoon,[1] the Vietnamese boat was sighted by an infantry post off the south shore of Lieyu at 16:37, where it had been too close and too late to apply for the indirect fire support by artillery intervention.

[39] The 629 Light Artillery Battalion—which happened to be taking a field drill practice in the ancient airport on the northeastern beachfront—launched a single star shell which lit up the background horizon sky, but found no invasion force approaching.

The Vietnamese boat was stranded on the sand beach southwest of Donggang (Dōnggāng) Fishery Port (Fort L-05), a sensitive strategic point in front of the mobile positions of M40 recoilless rifles and M30 mortars.

[52] A local store owner heard the crying of the refugees overnight and made a phone call to inform Huang Chao-hui, the National Assembly member in Kaohsiung, but the contact was soon lost.

[49] The path access was prohibited to the public by the military after 2020 till 10 August 2024, Hsien-Jer Chu, the documentary film director who accompanied the victim's family members to the site, realized that the corpses had been "disappeared.

"[8] Her questions were repeatedly denied by the military spokesman Major-general Chang Hui Yuan (張慧元少將), who accused Congresswoman Wu of "sabotaging the national reputation", and claimed it was actually "a Chinese fishing boat being sunk in the sea after ignoring the warnings".

[66] For the same reason, the Hujingtou Battle Museum of Lieyu (built since 1989) conspicuously left out any information on this part of history,[67] nor was it documented in the official archives of the Kinmen National Park that later took over management of the beach.

The opposition party, supported by the international community, took the chance to force Chiang Ching-kuo to lift martial law and begin the democratization process to distance itself from the Kuomintang's One China Policy.

[10] Later, on 14 July, Minister Cheng endorsed President Chiang's historical decree to end the notorious 38-year-long period of martial law in Taiwan (1948–1987),[68] except the War Zone Administration (戰地政務) on the frontier regions, including Kinmen and Matsu Islands, which remained under military governance until 7 November 1992.

[69][70] Furthermore, on 2 November, President Chiang lifted a ban preventing people from visiting their divided families in China across the Taiwan Strait by allowing transfer through a third place, such as Hong Kong, Okinawa, or Tokyo.

[71] After the scandal was exposed, President Chiang Ching-kuo received a letter from Amnesty International expressing humanitarian concern, and assigned the Chief of General Staff, Superior-general Hau, to investigate this case.

[7] On 16 June 1987, President of the Control Yuan (CY), Huang Tsun-chiu [zh] of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), assigned the committee member Ruo Wen-fu (羅文富) on an official investigation task to Lieyu.

[7] However, after Ruo submitted a field survey report expectedly identical to the KDC's story, Huang did not approve nor rejected the content, but only signed a word "Read" (閱) on 9 March 1988, which rendered the investigation incomplete.

[72][44] The Minister of National Defense, Cheng Wei-yuan, also arrived in Kinmen, and dispatched a special envoy of the Political Warfare Bureau to conduct the field investigation and excavation that discovered the civilian cadavers and eventually solved the criminal case on 23 May.

[75] Vice-president Wu Den-yih presented a commendation decree by President Ma Ying-jeou, who praised Chao's 50-year career in national security with so-called "loyalty, diligence, bravery, perseverance, intelligence, wisdom, insight and proficiency" (忠勤勇毅，才識閎通), and that "his virtue and conducts have set a good example model for future generations to follow..." (武德景行，貽範永式...

[77] Twenty years later, in May 2007, Major Liu Yu, the 1st Battalion Commander, proclaimed in a military magazine interview that they were executing direct superior orders, and one officer who killed the refugees was never charged.

Liao Nianhan (廖念漢) of the ROC Military Academy interviewed the WPN company commander Captain Li Zhong-yan (李中焱) to re-affirm the official testimony that he had, in person, found that all the passengers had died after firing two M72 LAW shells, and hence nobody got out of the boat and there were no killings by shooting.

[82][83] On 7 November 1992, the provisional martial law control was historically lifted after 42 years of the War Zone Administration in power, and KDC returned governmental and civilian services management to the local county offices.

[90][91][92] On 3 October 2018, legislator Freddy Lim, former Chairman of the Amnesty International Taiwan, inquired in a hearing of the Foreign and National Defense Committee [zh] to examine the victims' files in the military archives in order to express an apology to their families through the Vietnamese Representative Office (Vietnamese: Văn phòng Kinh tế Văn hoá Việt Nam), but Minister of National Defense General Yen Teh-fa disagreed: "The troops were following the Standard operating procedure (SOP rule) of the martial law period to execute [the orders], though it might look like having some issues nowadays; also, they have been court-martialed...".

[90][91] Later, MND replied: "It has been too difficult to identify the deceased due to the long time, so [the case] cannot be processed further", which served as the sole statement of the ROC government for over 30 years after martial law was lifted in 1987.

[93] On 13 July 2022, Control Yuan member Gao Yong-cheng [zh] submitted a re-investigation report after one year of documentation based on the provided military archives and interviews with near 20 veteran witnesses.

One of them, Tran Quoc Dung, who arrived in Xiamen later, was informed that two Vietnamese refugees boats had been destroyed in Kinmen and realized that his brother and cousin were dead, presented a commemorative plaque with a list of victims' names, pictures and birth years at the press conference, and stated that he was not there to blame the government or any individual.

[4] He understood the reasons for the historical mistake and believes that Taiwan government and people, out of humanitarianism and respect for human rights, will take concrete action to console the victims' families.

Chiu expresses the hope that the state pay attention to transitional justice to reopen the investigation, face historical mistakes and address the shortcomings of Taiwan's long overdue missing Refugee Law to pass a bill that meets international human rights standards this year.

A MND representative attended the conference to express their condolences and stressed accompanying the families to the scenes of the incidents, but maintained that the soldiers were carrying out their duties, and did not respond to the re-investigation demand.

The incident then stands at the juncture of certain issues, including: transitional justice, inclusive of past crimes committed by the military and its refusal to be accountable in the present, as well as Taiwan's poor treatment of refugees, which has affected individuals from a number of nationalities.