Ahn Jung-geun’s Remains Yet to Be Recovered
This is the fifth in a series of articles highlighting the life of Ahn Jung-geun on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his assassination of the first Japanese resident general of Korea, Hirobumi Ito, on Oct. 26, 1909, in China.
By Sunny Lee
Korea Times Correspondent
LUSHUN, China ― Until 2007, Lushun, near the northeastern port city of Dalian, was off limits for foreigners because of a Chinese naval base there. It has a museum, formerly a prison, which was also off-limits to foreigners until April this year due to what a Chinese guide called “sensitivity” involved.
Due to the past restrictions, the white Russian-style museum is still not very well known to foreigners. But there are now a handful of Korean visitors who pay 25 yuan ($3.70) at the entrance to see someone who is dear to them.
A century ago, a young Korean man cut off part of his finger in a solemn oath to assassinate the first prime minister of Japan, Hirobumi Ito, who was visiting China at that time.
Several months later, on Oct. 26, 1909, he carried out the plan. He was arrested and taken to the prison here. He was held in solitary confinement in a cell next to the warden’s office for his grave crime.
After five months, he was executed by hanging. He was 31. His body has since been lost.
A century later, some people are retracing Ahn Jung-geun (1879-1910) footprints.
“This is the place that I’ve always wanted to come. I learned about him in middle school. Now, I am at the place where he was 100 years ago,” said Cho Eun-young, 22, a student at Yonsei University.
Lee Hwan-hyuck, 27, a recent college graduate of psychology, said, “It’s ironic that this small place is filled with historical complexities where the histories of the three countries ― Korea, China and Japan ― intersect.”
Lee was pointing out the dilemma of how Ahn’s act is viewed differently. From the Japanese perspective, Ahn was a “terrorist,” who gunned down its top official. For Korea and China, the perspective was starkly different. To the two nations, which suffered the brunt of the Japanese military advance in the early part of the 20th century, Ahn was a patriot.
Cho quickly comes to Ahn’s defense. “It’s unfair to regard Ahn as a terrorist. He was a citizen of a small and weak country, which was controlled by a powerful Japan. He sacrificed his own life in an effort to free the nation from the occupiers’ grip.”
Another Korean visitor, who identified himself as Park, said that calling Ahn a terrorist is like calling Moses a murderer for killing an Egyptian, as depicted in the Bible. Ito was the top architect of Japan’s colonization of Korea, he added.
But despite their favorable views on Ahn, he is a little known figure outside Korea, if not inside. “I think I need some time to study more about him after I go back home. I know very little about him,” said Lee Jung-hyun, a student from Seoul’s Yongsan High School.
The museum recently also closed down a display room, which was used for Ahn’s medical checkup. “It’s because there are not enough visitors,” said Huang, the Chinese tour guide. He added that there used to be “many” North Koreans coming here to see Ahn.
Ahn was originally from today’s North Korean city of Haeju in Hwanghae Province. He is highly regarded in the North as well. A Korean-Chinese said he remembers watching an imported North Korean movie, titled “Ahn Jung-guen: Who Killed Hirobumi Ito.”
Ahn’s Remains Missing
About 100 meters from Ahn’s prison cell is the execution room where prisoners, including Ahn, were hanged. Before his death, he told his two brothers to bury his body in Harbin Park in Harbin City, 870 kilometers to the north, where he killed Ito. Ahn also said that he wanted his body to be moved to his homeland when Korea achieved independence from Japan.
Unfortunately, the patriot’s wish was not honored because his body has since been lost.
It was only in March last year that South Korea launched its first-ever mission to locate the remains of Ahn with the help of the Chinese government. “My understanding is that China at first was very cautious about South Korea’s proposal because Ahn was born in today’s North Korea. China said it couldn’t approve the plan without North Korea’s participation.
“So, South Korea asked North Korea to join, to which it agreed. That’s how the project began,” said Park Byung-seop, a history teacher, who often visits China to do research on Ahn.
According to Rhee Bong-jo, former vice minister of unification, the two Koreas held three rounds of talks on the project.
“But it was too late. The site where his body was believed to be buried was already being developed for a large-scale apartment complex. Ahn’s remains might have already been damaged during the construction of the buildings,” Rhee said.
Japan kept Ahn’s burial site a secret. But the daughter of the prison warden later testified that Ahn’s body was buried in the prison backyard, some 6,600 square meters away, according to Rhee.
Although North Korea agreed to the plan, it didn’t participate in the actual excavation, reportedly
because of numerous previous attempts that failed.
The two-month search operation by South Korea also ended in vain and the construction work soon resumed. With that, the hope of locating the body of the Korean patriot was lost forever.
“We should have done it much earlier,” said Park, the history teacher. “As early as 1947, Kim Ku (a prominent political leader at that time) proposed a joint project between South and North Korea to recover Ahn’s remains. But because of the differences among political factions, it didn’t materialize.”
“That was a great lost opportunity,” Park lamented.
In fact, Korea has missed many opportunities to honor its patriots. The case of Hong Beom-do (1868-1943), a commander- in-chief of the Korean Independence Army, who migrated to northern Manchuria (today’s Primorsky Krai) is another example.
When Stalin ordered Koreans living in the region to move to central Asia in 1937 as part of his harsh policies on ethnic minority groups, Hong was among the 170,000 Koreans who were packed into a freight train like sardines and relocated to Kazakhstan. In the barren new place, Hong’s life was miserable.
He worked as a janitor at a theater. One of his tasks was also to check people’s tickets. One day, he saw a poster of a new play, titled “Hong Beom-do, the Great General.”
“He just had to sob inside. It was a great irony for Hong to see his own play, while he himself was working as a janitor,” Park said, adding Korea now should fulfill the responsibility to properly honor its past patriots, including Hong and Ahn, and take good care of their remaining family members.
Honoring them also includes more efforts to better preserve the historical sites related to these patriots. In the Harbin Train Station where Ahn assassinated Ito, there is no explanation of the historic event ? just two pieces of brick pavement on the number 1 platform, one with a triangular mark inside, the other with a rectangular mark. They indicate the positions of Ahn and Ito 100 years ago, but the majority of passengers pass by unaware of this.
On Jan. 16, 2006, some Koreans set up a privately-funded statue of Ahn in downtown Harbin. It was removed 11 days later by the Chinese government, which stated that a foreigner’s statue couldn’t be displayed in an outdoor public space.
“Some Korean visitors come here and say the Chinese government didn’t do enough to protect the historic site and remember Ahn,” said Suh Myung-hoon, a local resident and also a private researcher on Ahn. It was Suh who helped the city government determine the assassination site in the newly renovated train station.
“But before Koreans complain about others, they should ask themselves how much they know about Ahn and how much effort they put into remembering their fallen heroes,” Suh said.