An Jung-geun Assassinates Itō Hirobumi at Harbin

Itō Hirobumi reached Harbin on October 26, 1909, during a visit to Manchuria. He met Russian finance minister Vladimir Kokovtsov before appearing on the station platform. An Jung-geun, a Korean resistance fighter, fired at him there and killed him. Russian authorities arrested An and subsequently handed him to Japanese custody.

An regarded Itō’s protectorate administration as a principal instrument of Korea’s loss of sovereignty. At his trial in Lüshun, he presented the shooting as an act by a Korean resistance officer rather than a private assassin. In his final statement on February 12, 1910, he objected that the judges, lawyers and interpreters were all Japanese and that the arguments were translated only in summary. He asked to be treated under international law as a captured combatant.

The Japanese court tried him as a criminal defendant and sentenced him to death on February 14. He was executed at Lüshun on March 26. The claim to combatant status was his argument before the court, not a status that the court recognized. Japan meanwhile commemorated Itō through a state funeral.

The killing removed a former prime minister and the first Resident-General in Korea. It did not originate Japan’s annexation policy: the Cabinet had approved that course in July 1909, before Harbin. The shooting and prosecution exposed opposing claims over Japanese rule, while the existing imperial policy continued toward Korea’s annexation in August 1910.