Page 1 of 2 South Korea marks a painful centenary
By Ronan Thomas
March 26, 1910. Lushun, northeast China. A mustachioed 30-year-old Korean
nationalist, Catholic convert and self-styled resistance fighter waits silently
in his prison cell. His Japanese guards keep close watch. Their prisoner is
special. He has been sentenced to death for a political assassination one year
earlier in Harbin, Manchuria, which shocked North Asia and enraged Japan. The
Korean finishes a written treatise calling for Pan-Asian political unity and
Christian solidarity before he is led out, with three others, to face a
hangman's rope. The prisoner's name: Ahn Jung-geun (1879-1910). His victim:
Hirobumi Ito (1841-1909), four times Japanese prime minister, eminence grise of
Japan's 19th
century Meiji Restoration reforms and hated former Japanese colonial
administrator in Korea.
Ahn's execution - in the Chinese port city formerly known as Port Arthur -
still resonates in Northeast Asia. The interwoven fates of Ahn and Ito continue
to complicate Korean and Japanese relations today. A century on, a complex
legacy persists.
On October 26 this year, a memorial museum dedicated to Ahn's life and death
opens in Seoul. A four storey building - 12 expensive neo-modernist glass
rectangles complete with statue-lined approach - is nearing completion and will
replace an older, more modest memorial hall in the capital's Namsan Park
district.
It will be an event of rich symbolism in South Korea, a clear demonstration of
how it wants its history to be viewed by the outside world - and who it
considers its heroes to be. When the museum opens, it will be attended by
senior South Korean politicians, historians and several of Ahn's relatives.
Elsewhere in South Korea, the centenary of Ahn's execution will be marked by
new TV documentaries, conferences and other exhibitions.
As ever, bilateral passions and conflicting Korean/Japanese historical
interpretations of Ahn's fate won't be far behind. Both nations view Ito's
assassination and Ahn's execution through diametrically-opposed prisms. In
South Korea, "Patriot Ahn" is feted as a near saint, an archetypal resistance
fighter and rallying figurehead. For most South Koreans, Ahn is the man who rid
his country of an oppressive colonial persecutor with Korean blood on his
hands. For some Japanese academics and sections of their country's media, Ahn
remains a terrorist, a distasteful murderer of one of their country's leading
reformist statesmen. Opinions of both men remain, on the whole, entrenched in
both countries, the result of decades of Korean/Japanese animosity. It is
highly unlikely in 2010 that either side will compromise on these central
issues of national identity.
There are other reasons for ongoing mutual recrimination. This year also marks
another emotional centenary for South Korea - Japan's full annexation of Korea
in August 1910, when Tokyo began its imposition of a nightmare occupation and
brutalization of Korea's people and culture until 1945. What is more, South
Koreans are also noting that the events of 1910 took place not just because of
Japanese territorial rapaciousness, but also with the diplomatic connivance of
the international Great Powers of the age. For these countries, Korea's fate
was seen as a sideshow. It was abandoned, by the stroke of a pen, to Japan's
tender mercies. With this shared grievance, Ito Hirobumi, Ahn Jung-geun and the
diplomatic iniquities of 1910 are receiving fresh regional attention.
To understand today's ongoing pain and pride in Korea it is worth recalling how
the fates of both men collided in 1909-1910 as well as the fractious context of
North East Asian geopolitics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Manchurian assassination
Ahn Jung-guen's execution in 1910 was the culmination of a short, tumultuous
life. He fitted the profile of many Koreans politicized against Japanese
expansionism from 1905 onwards. A skilled calligrapher, with aspirations to be
teacher, Ahn came from the town of Haeju (in today's North Korea).
He had been politically active against the Japanese early. His conversion to
Catholicism in 1895 played a key role, but he was also outraged by the failure
of successive Korean governments to prevent Japanese subversion of his
country's national sovereignty. A modernizer by instinct, he nevertheless also
recognized that the West's own colonial activities were inimical to Korea's
national interests.
Ahn favored Pan-Asian political and economic reforms which would preserve his
nation's distinct identity whilst rooting it in a hoped-for Christian Asian
future. He even admired many of the great Meiji reforms undertaken by the
Japanese from 1868. After 1905, his thinking evolved - to include
assassination. The key moment for Ahn seems to have been Japan's imposition of
a "protectorate" over Korea in 1905 and the arrival of former Japanese prime
minister Hirobumi Ito as resident general - de facto colonial governor - in
Seoul. He convinced himself that Korea's very identity was at stake and he must
act.
Forced into exile in the Russian far east in 1908, Ahn conspired as part of a
12-member Korean nationalist cell. In an act of solidarity with the sufferings
of the Korean people, this group hatched a plot to assassinate key Japanese
figureheads. To demonstrate their commitment, each of the conspirators cut off
their little fingers with knives in 1909, daubing a Korean national flag in
blood with the inscription "Liberate Korea".
Ahn himself planned Ito's killing meticulously; he had been tracking his
movements since late 1908. By October 1909, Ito had served four years as
resident general in Seoul and had resigned to work on a new portfolio in
Japan's privy council. But as a regional expert, Ito was still active in
negotiations with Russia on Korean and Manchurian issues, particularly the
financial implications of dividing Manchuria into new spheres of influence. The
following year, Ahn set his plans in final motion.
He travelled south into Manchuria, in 1909 a hotbed of competing attempts by
Tsarist Russia and Meiji-era Japan to control railway networks and access to
strategic sea ports. Apprised that Ito would arrive by train at the
Russian-controlled city of Harbin, Inner Manchuria, Ahn walked into the main
railway station on October 26. In his pocket, he carried a loaded pistol and a
folded Korean national flag. At 9am, a train pulled into the platform in front
of him. Russian sentries paced past; briefcase-carrying Japanese bureaucrats
flitted in and out of the carriages.
As the Korean watched intently, a 68-year old bearded figure left the train and
walked toward a group of assembled Russian and Japanese dignitaries. Seizing
the moment, the younger man fired four shots at close range, inflicting fatal
wounds. Before he was bundled to the ground by shocked Russian guards, Ahn
shouted for Korea's liberation from Japanese oppression and waved the Korean
flag in defiance. The dying Ito, when told that his assailant was Korean,
muttered, "He is a fool."
In the following months, Ito received a full state funeral in Tokyo, whilst
Russian authorities in Harbin handed Ahn over to a Japanese civil court in
Lushun. At his trial, Ahn stated his motives. Ito was responsible for 15
"crimes", primarily his colonial activities in Seoul. As such, he deserved to
die as the "oppressor-in chief of the Korean nation". Ahn was convicted and
subsequently executed on March 26, 1910, and his remains were buried in
unmarked ground in Lushun. In the succeeding decades, his grave was built over
by construction projects of the People's Republic of China. In 2010, the
governments of South Korea, Japan and China are still arguing about the exact
location and repatriation of Ahn's remains.
Ahn's pistol shots echoed around Northeast Asia. They caused a regional
sensation although only a brief flicker of interest in international diplomatic
chancelleries. If Japan had lost an elder statesman and key regional
negotiator, Korea had gained a national hero.
Ito, champion of the Meiji
Ito's death at Harbin station was a shocking conclusion to a life dedicated to
his country's domestic and international public service. By the time he died,
he had established a reputation as one of Japan's most influential 19th century
politicians and as a prime minister who had served an impressive four terms.
Born in 1841, at the tail end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Ito came from a
low-ranking samurai background. But his willingness to embrace Western ideas
and his adroit political maneuvering in the 1870s and 1880s propelled him to
the highest ranks of Japanese politics. So much so that Ito retains a
reputation in Japan as a leading economic and political modernizer (as well as
for a philandering private life). Ito enjoyed a prestigious Japanese and
Western education. In 1863, after working his passage westwards aboard a
steamship, he attended Britain's elite University College London. Entranced by
London's modernity, he devoured the city's vibrant and raucous free press,
encountered Britain's boundless popular confidence in monarchy and empire and
witnessed the opening of the world's first underground railway system - the
Tube. From his very first encounter with the West, Ito yearned for similar
marvels for Japan.
Returning home, Ito drew on his family connections and membership of Japan's
oligarchical class. He was recruited to the Japanese civil service and became
an obsessive advocate for introducing Western market principles into Japan's
traditional society. Ito's ambitions for Japan mirrored a period of
unprecedented change in Japan's economic and political life - the Meiji
Restoration (1868-1912). During this period, Japan drank deeply from the well
of Western ideas and technological development.
Japan emerged from centuries of isolation, determined to carve for itself a
new, respected, position in the world by mimicking the best the West had to
offer. As both architect and champion of the Meiji reforms, Ito was convinced
that Japan could better the Great Powers of the age - Britain, France, Russia
and the two rising industrial colossi, Germany and the United States. In
1871-3, Ito took part in the famous Iwakura Mission, a two-year fact-finding
mission to Europe and the United States that aimed to identify Western economic
and political strengths and distil them into an elixir for Japan's own
consumption.
It was the ultimate "best practices" research project. The mission concluded
that the West's global leadership in the 1870s was not due to innate
superiority but rather the happy coincidence of key Western political and
economic reforms made during 1800-1840, backed up by imperial aspiration and
technological innovation. If the West could achieve such wonders in only 40
years, the mission's report suggested, Japan could do the same. Japan might
leapfrog the competition, as it were - but only if it possessed the necessary
national will and fortitude. It was a powerful message for Japan's new
generation of political reformers. Ito was a prime mover in implementing the
Iwakura conclusions. As an up-and-coming reformist, he rose rapidly through the
Japanese government hierarchy from the late 1870s. He was to become Japan's
master imitator.
The Meiji reforms roared into life. Urged on by Ito and his colleagues, Japan
began the process of full-Western style industrialization. The foundations
would be threefold. First, Japan advocated protective tariffs to build its own
resources. Second, it launched a policy of British and American-style
aggressive free-trade market economics. Third, Ito turned to rising Germany for
the latest in political and economic thinking. In 1882-83, he travelled to
Berlin, where he was hugely impressed by Prussia's political constitution and
Germany's model of economics/politics and scientific development. He identified
closely with Germany's own restless desire for a "place in the sun".
Elected prime minister for the first time in 1885, Ito immediately established
Western-style cabinet and civil service models. He went on to draft the radical
Meiji Constitution (1889) and established Tokyo's first Diet (bicameral
legislature) in 1890. Ito's Meiji Constitution was not a truly democratic
document. Nevertheless, by enshrining the Western ideas of wider political
participation, freedom of religion and freedom of the press, it was a
revolutionary step-change beyond Japan's previous semi-feudal polity.
Ito's successes as a Meiji reformist equipped him for four terms as Japan's
prime minister (1885-1888, 1892-1896, 1898 and 1900-1901). His reputation as an
international statesman grew, as did his conviction that Western models must be
emulated to Japan's advantage. In 1897, he attended Queen Victoria's Diamond
Jubilee celebrations in London, noting their splendor and the virtues enjoyed
by a first rank imperial power. It was a path which Japan would also imitate -
disastrously - during the 20th century.
In 1901, Ito's international achievements were further recognized in the award
of an honorary doctorate by Yale University. His career winding down, Ito
resigned as premier the same year. He had witnessed his country's growing
economic, political and military power and signs of Japan's rising regional
territorial confidence and ambitions. His attentions now turned toward Korea.
After designing the administrative structures for a euphemistically-named
"protectorate" of Korea, Ito was appointed as Japan's first resident general in
Seoul from 1905-1909. His first instincts were to introduce gradualist reforms,
but his solutions soon became authoritarian as Korean resistance acts
multiplied. Japan's forced embrace of Korea tightened. Drawing on experience
honed in his successive Meiji governments, Ito developed mechanisms for a fully
fledged Japanese colonial government in Seoul. He disbanded the Korean army,
set up a feared internal police force, appointed a compliant Korean political
cabinet, and in 1907 cynically forced the abdication of Korean monarch Gojong
in favor of his son, angering many Koreans, including Ahn.
Ito - elevated to the status of prince in 1907 - became a hated figurehead. He
did not see full annexation for Korea by the end of the decade as inevitable,
but by 1909 the rising tide of internal opposition meant it was much more
likely. With the key structures for a future Japanese administration for Korea
firmly in place by 1909, Ito relinquished his post for an active advisory role
in the Japanese Privy Council.
Nemesis and the train to Harbin were fast approaching.
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