Seoul Wants Tokyo’s Help in Finding Ahn’s Remains
By Do Je-hae
Staff Reporter
Korea and Japan have had their differences over many conflicts in the past, and one of them is the issue of relocating the remains of a Korean independence activist revered here for his 1909 Harbin assassination of Hirobumi Ito, a former Japanese prime minister who had been leading Tokyo's annexation of Korea.
In 2008, the Korean government made an official diplomatic request to Japan regarding the whereabouts of patriot Ahn Jung-geun's remains, but the Japanese government said they did not have any relevant information.
According to a local broadcaster in 2009, however, the Japanese government had tried to keep Ahn's remains from being returned to his family.
A document entitled "Confidential n. 14," discovered at a museum of diplomatic records, carries instructions from the Japanese Consulate in Harbin to regional officials in Guandong, China, forbidding them from "sending Ahn's remains to his family."
Ahead of the 100th anniversary of Ahn's March 26 execution in Lushun, China, authorities plan to seek more cooperation from the Japanese side for information on his remains for the burial he deserves in his homeland.
The Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs (MPVA) seeks "interaction with the Japanese authorities for accurate facts, which will facilitate a more scientific search."
"We will begin talks with the foreign ministry and review the issue of seeking Japan's cooperation through official diplomatic channels," an MPVA director said.
"Since Ahn's execution, excavation projects have been launched on multiple occasions, with an intensive search in 2008. Not much has been achieved, but we do believe that such attempts should continue, especially as this is the 100th anniversary of Ahn's execution."
Rather than embarking on additional excavations in Lushun, the ministry will place more priority on collecting relevant information here and abroad this year, with cooperation from relevant governments, the official added.
Kim Yang, minister of patriots and veterans affairs recently expressed his belief in the possibility of Japan's possession of records on Ahn's remain, stressing that Japan is a "country that has a reputation for having particular expertise in keeping historical records."
He also raised suspicions that Japan may have secretly buried the remains or moved them to Japan, fearing that if the burial site were disclosed, it may become a place of idolization for protesters of Japanese rule.
Is there any basis in these claims?
"The depth and breadth of Japan's records ㅡ in all sorts of fields ㅡ are just incredible," said Professor Kim Hee-gon, a history professor at Andong National University in North Gyeonsang Province.
He added that even if they do have records on Ahn, Tokyo would naturally be reluctant to disclose them as Hirobumi Ito was one of the most highly-placed Japanese politicians in its modern history.
"For the Japanese, Ito was the architect of its parliamentary democracy and the father of modernization," Kim said.
Efforts to recover Ahn's remains have faced numerous hurdles in the past, due to a lack of even the most basic information.
"We still don't know who received the body after the execution. There are no witnesses to the burial. Ahn's brothers in China were simply informed after the execution that he was already buried," Kim said.
Korean excavation teams searched the public cemetery at the Lushun prison based on sketchy maps on a number of occasions in recent years.
On-the-spot research was forbidden until diplomatic relations between Korea and China were established in 1992 and even then, Lushun was not readily accessible as it was a military base.
Difficulties in discovering Ahn's remains underline the hardship faced by Korean scholars in collecting relevant foreign records.
Scholars of the Japanese occupation period have consistently raised the necessity for accessing and studying more foreign documents, as there is more information in Japan and Russia than in Korea.
Professor Choi Seo-myun, one of the first researchers on Ahn, said that many substantial documents were hidden by the Japanese during the almost 40 years they occupied Korea.
Domestic research on him only started gaining momentum in the mid-1990s. Due to a lack of researchers with fluency in Japanese, a Seoul-based commemorative association for Ahn has experienced difficulties in accessing newspaper articles and trial records on his activities.
When retrieved, Ahn's surviving descendants said that they want to see them buried in the DMZ as a symbol of peace.
Meanwhile, the ministry plans a commemorative ceremony on March 26 and a new memorial opens on Oct. 26.
With cooperation from the unification authorities, the ministry is considering sending invitations to Ahn's surviving descendants in North Korea for the occasion as well.