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Korean Monument's Long Journey Home

Hyejin Kim - 2/23/2006

A historical stone monument is finally returning to its home in North Korea after more than 100 years in Japan, the Korea Times reported on Feb. 13. The six-foot stone structure, called Pukkwan Taechop-bi or Monument to the Great Victory of Pukkwan, was erected in 1707 to pay reverence to Jung Moon-bu, a general who defeated a sixteenth-century Japanese invasion in Hamkyung province in present-day North Korea.

The year of the stone's disappearance is unknown. When a Korean student traveled to Japan in 1909, he discovered the monument and launched a campaign to have it returned to Korea, according to a report in Donga Daily last October. Since 1978 the South Korean government has tried to retrieve it.

The monument was held in the now-controversial Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial honoring Japan's 2.5 million war dead including 14 Class-A criminals. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's regular visits to the shrine have provoked reactions from Chinese and Koreans. The Korean peninsula was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945. Japan's influence was strong in the decades before Korea's formal annexation, and the monument was probably taken then.

Japan turned down previous requests for the stone's return. Because the monument is from North Korea and Tokyo does not have diplomatic relations with Pyongyang, Japan claimed the monument did not need to go back. In addition, the legal owner in Japan, the Yashkuni Shrine, also said the monument would be returned upon the unification of the Korean peninsula.

In 2000, a Japanese Buddhist monk, Kakinuma sensin (74), met a Korean Buddhist monk, Chosun (76), who jointly lead the Korea-Japan Buddhist Welfare Association. After five years of calling for the monument's return, Japan finally delivered it to South Korea last October.

South Korea's Cultural Heritage Administration has now announced an agreement between South and North Korea to restore the monument to its home. To celebrate the anniversary of the March First Independence Movement, which marks a 1919 uprising against colonial authorities, a ceremony will be held in Kaesung, North Korea, where the monument will be transferred from the South Korean government to the North Korean government. Following the ceremony the monument will be taken to its original location in Hamkyung province.

This will be the first year since the division of the peninsula in 1945 for the two Koreas to observe the holiday together.

If the exchange could produce cooperation between the three countries, then the monument's long sojourn may have been worthwhile. When it arrives home, the stone may stand as a monument to friendship in Northeast Asia.