Silver Prize Advocate of World Citizenship

By Geoffrey Fattig

One hundred years after Ahn Jung-geun gained infamy for his assassination of Hirobumi Ito on a railway platform in Harbin, China, it seems an appropriate time for a reexamination of Ahn's place in modern East Asian history.

To Koreans, he remains the preeminent symbol of selfless resistance to a tragic and unjust colonial occupation.

For Japanese, he was long reviled for gunning down the country's first prime minister, the man who laid the foundations for the modern Japanese state with the creation of the Meiji Constitution.