China Shrine to Korean Assassin Irks Japan
Japan, South Korea and China are sparring over a new shrine.
The opening on Sunday of a memorial hall in China to the assassin of the Japanese governor-general of Korea in 1909 has drawn a sharp exchange of words between Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing.
The memorial hall was built at the railway station in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin, where Korean national Ahn Jung-geun shot and killed Hirobumi Ito on Oct. 26, 1909.
http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2014/01/21/chinese-shrine-to-korean-assassin-irks-japan/?mod=WSJ_korearealtimeRealTime
South Korea - “look out at the site of the patriotic deed by Patriot Ahn.”
Japan - “very regrettable.” “We acknowledge (Mr. Ahn) as a terrorist who received the death sentence for killing our first prime minister,”
South Korea - We “cannot repress our astonishment that the chief cabinet secretary, who represents the Japanese government, makes such (an) irrational and ignorant comment. This clearly shows that Japan’s governing power still has regressive historic perspective that beautifies and justifies (the) history of imperial invasion,”
South Korea - “If Ahn Jung-geun was a terrorist, then Japan was a terrorist state for having mercilessly invaded and plundered countries around it.”
China - construction of the memorial is “justified and reasonable.” “China does not accept the so-called protest by the Japanese side,”
One of the ironies of the dispute over the legacy of Mr. Ahn is that he is also known as a pan-Asianist who called for better ties between China, Japan and Korea to oppose the West.