BEIJING (Yonhap News) ― China has started work to set up a monument honoring a revered Korean independence fighter who assassinated a prominent Japanese colonial leader in 1909, a diplomatic source said Sunday.

Ahn Jung-geun shot to death the Korean Peninsula’s first Japanese governor-general, Hirobumi Ito, in Harbin, China, in October 1909. A year later, he was executed at a Japanese prison in the northern Chinese city of Ryojun, now called Lushun.

South Korea and China have been working to set up the monument in Harbin, and the issue was discussed during a meeting in Seoul between South Korean President Park Geun-hye and visiting Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi last week.

“I learned that China has begun work to establish the monument,” the source said on the condition of anonymity, adding that the Chinese side has yet to notify the South Korean government of details.

Japan drew anger from South Korea last week after its government’s top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, criticized the topic Park had raised during her meeting with Yang and referred to Ahn as a “criminal.”

South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young lashed out at the “deeply regrettable” remarks by Suga, saying “Patriot Ahn Jung-geun sacrificed himself for the independence of the Korean Peninsula and peace in the eastern world.”

Last week, China’s foreign ministry also openly praised Ahn, calling him “a historically renowned anti-Japan fighter” who “is respected by Chinese people as well.”

The assassination by Ahn occurred prior to the beginning of Japan’s 36-year brutal colonial rule of Korea from 1910.