A group of South Korean people held a ceremony in Dalian, northeastern China, on Sunday to mark the 107th anniversary of the execution by the Japanese of a Korean national hero who assassinated a top Japanese official more than a century ago, as a civic event amid a Seoul-Beijing feud over the planned deployment of an advanced US missile defense system.

The national hero, Ahn Jung-geun shot and killed the Korean Peninsula’s first Japanese governor-general, Hirobumi Ito, at a railway station in Harbin in 1909. A year later, or months after Japan formally annexed Korea, he was executed at a Japanese prison in the northern Chinese district of Ryojun, now called Lushun in Dalian. 

The memorial was held at the memorial hall for Ahn Jung-geun inside the Lushun Russian-Japanese Prison Museum and organized by the association of Korean residents and a group seeking friendly ties between South Korea and China.

Sunday’s memorial brought together 200 people including Lee Sei-kee, chief of the South Korea-China Friendship Association.

“Martyr Ahn brought to the head a list of 15 charges against Ito, including Japan’s assassination of Joseon Dynasty Empress Myeongseong (in 1895), at a trial in Lushun, making headlines at that time,” Lee said at the ceremony.

He also said, “We have been worried about soured relations between South Korea and China as the two countries are set to celebrate the 25th anniversary of diplomatic ties this year,” referring to China‘s ongoing economic retaliations over South Korea’s deployment of the missile defense system, known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, in South Korea.

China has repeatedly prodded South Korea and the United States to stop the deployment and has taken retaliatory measures, including a ban on sales of tour packages to South Korea in early March.

South Korea has hosted a similar ceremony at the same place since 2015, but it was switched to a civic one this year due to the row over the missile system‘s deployment aimed at North Korea’s possible missile attacks on the South.

The participants observed a moment of silence and laid flowers at Ahn‘s memorial hall before looking around the cell where Ahn was held and his execution site at the museum.

Japan ruled the Korean Peninsula as a colony from 1910-45 and controlled much of China in the early part of the 20th century. (Yonhap)