Memorial to Korean hero to be erected in Harbin
Print Edition
China and South Korea are to cooperate on a memorial to a Korean national hero who assassinated a Japanese official a century ago.
Ahn Jung-geun shot and killed Hirobumi Ito, then Japan’s top official in Korea, at the railway station in Harbin in northeast China in 1909.
Ahn, also a hero in North Korea, killed Ito in response to Japan’s colonial designs over the Korean Peninsula. Ahn was hanged the following year, when Korea also formally became a Japanese colony, heralding a brutal occupation which lasted until the end of World War II.
Japan invaded northeast China (Manchuria during the war) in the 1930s before occupying most of eastern China.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye met China’s top foreign policy official Yang Jiechi in Seoul on Monday and both said work was progressing on a monument to Ahn in Harbin, according to a statement from the presidential Blue House in Seoul.
“Ahn Jung-geun is a very famous anti-Japanese fighter in history,” China’s foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a regular briefing yesterday. “He is respected by the Chinese people as well.”
“China will in accordance with relevant regulations on memorial facilities involving foreigners make a study to push forward relevant work.”
Tokyo vehemently opposes the monument to Ito, Japan’s first prime minister. “We have been telling the South Korean government that Ahn Jung-geun was a criminal,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said yesterday. “I’m afraid this is not good for relations between Japan and South Korea.”
Ahn remains a potent symbol. In July fans in Seoul unveiled a giant banner of his image at an East Asia Cup football match between South Korea and Japan.
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