The Harbin An Jung-Geun Statue: A Korea/China-Japan Historical Memory Controversy

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The Chinese and South Korean governments have recently announced the building of a new monument to An Jung-Geun in Harbin. An is most famous for his 1909 assassination of Ito Hirobumi, a high Japanese official who framed the Meiji constitution, served as prime minister, and is credited with being one of the great modernizers of the Meiji period. Ito also led Japan's colonization of Korea and negotiated the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Li Hongzhang, which concluded the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), giving Japan control over Taiwan, the Kwantung Peninsula, and reparations equal to several times the Qing Empire's annual budget. For these reasons, Ito is widely reviled and An lionized in Korea and China. By contrast, Ito remains an iconic figure in Japan and the Japanese government has responded to the news of the plan to honor the man who killed one of the nation's modern heroes in this way by stating that it would “not be good for their relations and that An was a criminal.”