An Jung Gun shot to death Hirobumi Ito, the chieftain of Japan's aggression on Korea, at Haerbin Railway Station on Oct. 26, 1909. This was a stern punishment meted out to the Japanese imperialists by the Korean people as well as a patriotic deed as it showed that the Koreans are a nation strong in the spirit of independence and they do not fear to die for the restoration of the national sovereignty, the article said, and went on:

Prompted by the desire to save the destiny of the country on decline, martyr An joined in the patriotic cultural enlightenment movement and the campaign for the repayment of the national loan to Japan and turned out in the Righteous Volunteers Army Movement against the Japanese imperialists when they escalated their aggression on Korea.

His shooting to death of Ito was not simply prompted by his anti-Japanese sentiment but carried out by him as part of the RVAM, one of the forms of Korean people's anti-Japanese struggle, to fulfil his duty as chief of its staff.

Therefore, he should have been treated as a prisoner of war under international law rather than being tried at the Japanese imperialists' court.

His action was also part of the just struggle of the Korean people against the imperialist aggression on other nations, wishing for peace of the Orient.

While being in prison, he authored the "Theory on Peace in the East" to expose the unreasonableness and dangerous nature of the Japanese imperialists' policy of aggression and express his stand against it.

He linked the peace in the East with the issue of Korea's independence, in particular, and contended that the peace of the East could be preserved only when Korea became free from the Japanese imperialists' colonial rule.

The world recognized his patriotic deed as an action of rejecting Japan's "protectorate" over Korea little short of a colonial rule and declaring the Korean people's just resistance against the colonial rule of the Japanese imperialists.

An's shooting to death of Ito was as good as indicting before the world the Japanese imperialists for their colonial rule over Korea.

He cited 15-point defence exposing the crimes of Hirobumi Ito to justify his killing. His assertions were a historical indictment passed not only on Ito but on the Japanese imperialists who trampled upon the sovereignty and independence of Korea. They clarified the reason why the Korean nation came to harbor resentment against Japan and the justice of its anti-Japanese struggle.

When Ito was shot to death, the Japanese imperialists embellished his career of aggression to the utmost in a bid to conceal their horror.

The Japanese imperialists hanged him to death at the then Lushun prison on Mar. 26, 1910 and secretly buried his body for fear of the Korean people's protest against Japan while working hard to hide their crime.

100 years have passed since then, but the Korean people still remember the never-to-be-condoned hideous crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists in the past and will force Japan to pay for them without fail.