A new Asian diplomatic row broke out on Monday 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”.
In 1909, Ahn Jung-geun shot and killed Hirobumi Ito, Japan’s first prime minister and its top official in Japanese-occupied Korea, at the railway station in the northeast Chinese city of Harbin.
Ahn was hanged by Japanese forces the following year, when Korea also formally became a Japanese colony, heralding a brutal occupation that lasted until the end of the second world war in 1945.
A joint Chinese-South Korean memorial hall in Ahn’s honour was unveiled at the train station on Sunday.
Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s top government spokesman, said on Monday that Tokyo had conveyed its regret to Beijing and Seoul over the monument.