A new Asian diplomatic row broke out yesterday after China unveiled a memorial to a Korean national hero who assassinated a Japanese official a century ago — with Tokyo condemning him as a “terrorist.”
China fired back by hailing the man, Ahn Jung-geun, as “a famous anti-Japanese high-minded person.”
In 1909, Ahn shot and killed Hirobumi Ito, Japan’s first prime minister and its top official in Japanese-occupied Korea, at the railway station in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin.
Ahn was hanged by Japanese forces the following year, when Korea formally became a Japanese colony, heralding a brutal occupation that lasted until the end of World War II in 1945.
A joint Chinese-South Korean memorial hall in Ahn’s honor was unveiled at the train station on Sunday.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said yesterday that Tokyo had told Beijing and Seoul it considered the monument “extremely regrettable.”
“We recognize Ahn Jung-geun as a terrorist who was sentenced to death for killing our country’s first prime minister,” Suga said.
“I cannot help saying that it is not contributing to building peace and cooperative relations in this region that South Korea and China took the joint cross-border move based on unilateral evaluation on a matter that happened in the previous century,” he added.
In response, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hong Lei (洪磊) defended the memorial as “completely reasonable and justified.”
He described Ahn as “a famous anti-Japanese high-minded person” who “is also respected by the Chinese people.”
Political relations between China, Japan and South Korea — Asia’s first, second and fourth-largest economies respectively — are heavily colored by 20th-century history, when Tokyo’s imperial forces rampaged across the region.
Beijing and Tokyo are embroiled in a bitter row over disputed islands in the East China Sea, and tensions rose further last month when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine that honors Japan’s war dead, including indicted war criminals.
CHIPMAKING INVESTMENT: J.W. Kuo told legislators that Department of Investment Review approval would be needed were Washington to seek a TSMC board seat Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said he received information about a possible US government investment in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and an assessment of the possible effect on the firm requires further discussion. If the US were to invest in TSMC, the plan would need to be reviewed by the Department of Investment Review, Kuo told reporters ahead of a hearing of the legislature’s Economics Committee. Kuo’s remarks came after US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Tuesday said that the US government is looking into the federal government taking equity stakes in computer chip manufacturers that
NORTHERN STRIKE: Taiwanese military personnel have been training ‘in strategic and tactical battle operations’ in Michigan, a former US diplomat said More than 500 Taiwanese troops participated in this year’s Northern Strike military exercise held at Lake Michigan by the US, a Pentagon-run news outlet reported yesterday. The Michigan National Guard-sponsored drill involved 7,500 military personnel from 36 nations and territories around the world, the Stars and Stripes said. This year’s edition of Northern Strike, which concluded on Sunday, simulated a war in the Indo-Pacific region in a departure from its traditional European focus, it said. The change indicated a greater shift in the US armed forces’ attention to a potential conflict in Asia, it added. Citing a briefing by a Michigan National Guard senior
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
ENHANCED SECURITY: A Japanese report said that the MOU is about the sharing of information on foreign nationals entering Japan from Taiwan in the event of an emergency The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed that Taiwan and Japan had signed an agreement to promote information exchanges and cooperation on border management, although it did not disclose more details on the pact. Ministry spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said the ministry is happy to see that the two nations continue to enhance cooperation on immigration control, in particular because Taiwan and Japan “share a deep friendship and frequent people-to-people exchanges.” “Last year, more than 7.32 million visits were made between the two countries, making it even more crucial for both sides to work closer on immigration and border control,” he said. Hsiao
RSS