Ahn Jung-geun’s Brave Act

By Choi Yearn-hong

On Oct. 26, 1909, in Harbin, Manchuria, a young Korean patriot and an officer of the Korean Independence Army, Ahn Jung-geun (1879-1910), assassinated Hirobumi Ito, Japan's first resident-general of Korea, as well as prime minister and president of the Privy Council.

The Korean people considered Ito to be the main architect of Japanese aggression in Korea. He had a meeting with the Russian finance minister in a train at the Harbin railroad station in order to confirm the fact that Japan would annex Korea.

Ahn killed Ito because he was the heart of rising Japanese imperialism. Ahn was an amateur hunter without any sophisticated gun. He claimed at his trial that Ito ``was undermining peace in Asia and I decided to kill him to safeguard greater peace in East Asia.''

However, he was known as a peace advocate, as well as an independence fighter who was indignant at Ito's contradictory and disgusting behavior toward Korea. In his Lushun prison cell after the assassination, he wrote ``A Treatise on Peace in the East Asia'' for his dream of an East Asia Union.

It impressed many people, including Japanese intellectuals. He was not just a hunter; he was a thinker and philosopher for peace not just in East Asia but also Asia as a whole.

His East Asia Union, or Asian United Nations, would be the first advocate of international peace and prosperity for East Asia long before Woodrow Wilson proposed and created the League of Nations in 1919 that became a harbinger of the United Nations.

Ahn believed that China, Japan and Korea should work together, while maintaining their sovereignty as independent nations. Together they could resist the encroachment of Western aggression on East Asia.

His vision was not limited to East Asia. His peace and prosperity model extended to India, Thailand and other South Asian countries. He looked beyond the Korean border. He was a pan-Asian peace advocate.

Patriot Ahn must have believed in Ito's ``Oriental Peace Theory by Japan'' in the beginning and trusted it, but later became disillusioned about his conspiracy to colonize Korea, Manchuria and China.

Many Korean people were fooled by Japanese rhetoric. Ahn was an innocent pacifist who aimed to kill Japanese ambition in 1909. Ito's ``maintenance of the Oriental peace and solidification of Korea's independence'' was a glorious fiction for Japanese military expansionism.

Ahn admired the Japanese emperor and many other decent individuals. He respected Japan as an Asian nation that had fully reformed itself and escaped the ``Western threat.'' He hoped that its influence would help other Asian countries do the same, while also asserting their independence.

He could not complete his treatise in prison because the death sentence was executed in March 1910. But his incomplete writing had a good enough explanation for his assassination of Ito.

Many people in Korea and East Asia discovered one righteous man's political sacrifice for peace and admired his regional peace-and-prosperity vision for the region in the first decade of the 20th century. The Asian Development Bank we see today is one example of his vision.

One may save money, and invest it for a higher yield across national boundaries. Affluent nations' funds can be transferred freely to less wealthy nations for equal prosperity.

Banks are supposed to function for the common interest of humankind. He proposed the joint bank of China, Japan and Korea, and a common currency for the three nations.

Developing nations still need educated manpower, investment money or capital, and advanced technology to improve their fates, but they do not have the resources necessary.

Therefore, the idea of cooperation is the cornerstone of international peace and prosperity. This was basically Ahn's belief and dream in his dreary and cold prison cell from 1909 to 1910 in Manchuria.

I can finally see the international cooperation among China, Japan and Korea that Ahn visualized a century ago. Each nation maintains its sovereignty as an independent country, but it respects its neighbors' sovereignty and seeks mutually beneficial ways to maintain this.

The United Nations is one international body of which Ahn dreamed. The World Bank is another one. The European Union is already working toward the reality of an international body for a great majority of countries there.

Unfortunately, Ahn's sacrifice or martyrdom did not stop Japanese militarism and imperialism. Japan started a war with China in 1937 and later entered World War II against the United States, Great Britain and their allies.

The end result was the Japanese surrender in August 1945 after the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that resulted in the deaths of many innocent Japanese subjects. If Japan knew about Ahn's martyrdom in 1910, such knowledge could have avoided such a massive tragedy.

If Ahn's ideas had been put into practice, then the wars that have rocked Asia over the last century might have been avoided. Japan did not learn a lesson from the martyrdom. That was the source of the tragedy.

Ahn attempted to restore not only independence of Korea from Japanese colonial rule, but also Oriental peace, as Ito once proclaimed. Ahn was truly a pacifist and global thinker.

He was a believer in peace and prosperity for the general welfare of people beyond national boundaries. That is the reason why Ahn has been admired and respected by many Japanese intellectuals.

Ahn should be remembered as one of the prominent Asian thinkers and philosophers who dreamed of peace and prosperity at the turn of the 20th century, and his martyrdom should be recorded in history.

He was one of the most knowledgeable people on East Asian and international affairs during his short lifetime. He was an educator who established the Samheung and Donui schools in Korea before he went into the Independence Army.

More than that, he is a saint in Korean history. His grandson once told me that his grandfather's gun was not a reliable one, but God helped him to shoot Hirobumi.

Ahn's brave act saved the pride of Koreans in East Asia and the world. I am proud of him as our saint and patriot.

Dr. Choi is a political scientist retired after a long teaching career in the United States and Korea.