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SKOREA-JAPAN-DIPLOMACY-HISTORY
Seoul seeks to retrieve Korean assassin’s remains
SEOUL , South Korea, Jan 22, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – South Korea is seeking to
recover the remains of an independence activist who assassinated Japan’s top
colonial official to mark a key anniversary, potentially exacerbating
historical disputes between the neighbours.
South Korea and Japan are both US allies, democracies and market economies
faced with an overbearing China and nuclear-armed North Korea.
But relations between Tokyo, Beijing, and both Koreas continue to be
heavily affected by Japan’s expansionism in the first half of the 20th
century, including its colonisation of the peninsula.
Ahn Jung-geun is a case in point.
In 1909 he shot dead Hirobumi Ito, a four-time Japanese prime minister and
at the time Tokyo’s top official in Korea in the northeast Chinese city of
Harbin, then also under Japanese control.
Ahn was executed the following year. In Korea he is lauded as a hero,
praised in school textbooks and with a statue in central Seoul, while Tokyo
regards him as a criminal and terrorist.
Seoul, which regularly accuses Tokyo of failing to properly address the
past, is preparing a series of 26 initiatives to mark the 100th anniversary
of a Korean independence movement on March 1.
Among them, it will look to launch a joint project with the North to
recover Ahn’s remains, the ministry of patriots and veterans affairs said in
a statement.
“The purpose of this project is to fulfil our immense responsibility as a
nation by bringing home the remains of a great patriot who worked so hard for
our country,” a ministry official told AFP Tuesday.
Ahn is believed to have been buried in the grounds of the prison in Dalian
where he was hanged, but Tokyo has not responded to requests for records of
his grave, the South’s Yonhap news agency reported.
In his will, Ahn asked to be re-buried in Korea once it recovered its
sovereignty.
“I will also make every effort for the independence of Korea even after I
go to heaven,” he wrote.
Ahn was born in Haeju in South Hwanghae province, now part of North Korea,
whose state media excoriate Japan on a near-daily basis.
Beijing’s Communist authorities — who use nationalism as part of their
claim to legitimacy — also regularly denounce Tokyo over historical issues.
China and South Korea established a memorial to Ahn in 2014 at the Harbin
railway station where he carried out the killing.
Tokyo criticised the monument, saying it did not contribute to peace and
“co-operative relations” in the region and branding Ahn a “terrorist”.
The hall was moved in 2017, when Beijing and Seoul were at loggerheads
over the deployment of the THAAD US missile defence system in the South.
BSS/AFP/RY/1555hrs