The calligraphy of South Korean independence heroes, created while awaiting execution of the assassination of Japanese leaders, is a country's super-rich looking to bring home historic artworks, which breaks new auction records in Seoul.

Ahn Jung-Geun, respected for defending the country's abuses, was known for his dramatic high-risk assassination of Japan's first Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi at a railway station in Harbin in 1909. Ann yelled “Breathe for Korea!” According to the Asian Studies Association in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he was arrested.

In 1910, before Tokyo officially annexed the Korean Peninsula, he was killed by Japanese authorities and continued until the end of World War II during the brutal period of occupation.

Now, more than a century after his death, Ahn's calligraphy was created in his prison cell in his last few days (usually at the request of Japanese officials), which attracted new attention from Seoul's dazzling art world.

In Korea, Ahn's life has long inspired generations of artists, leading to a famous musical, multiple novels and films, including a starring "Crash on to you you You" actor Hyun Bin.

Ann, who was imprisoned for about 40 days after his execution, has been busy writing autobiography and producing hundreds of calligraphy works, including books requested by his own prison guards.

"The court and prison officials said they wanted to keep my calligraphy as a souvenir, brought me hundreds of silk and paper and asked me to create it for them," Arn wrote in his autobiography. "Even if I wasn't particularly skilled, I ended up spending hours every day doing calligraphy."

Even if Ahn assassinated their supreme official ITO, his calligraphy was carefully preserved to them, and some of their descendants donated them to the South Korean government, which they later designated as a national treasure.

Now more calligraphy is emerging in the private art market, with an auction of 940 million won ($674,098) in Seoul last month, more than triple its opening remarks.

Kim Jun-Jun-Seon, an art valuation expert at Seoul Auction House, said the article said that "green bamboo" is owned by a Japanese who do not want to be identified and they already have an impeccable job to save it.

"It's not even installed, it's still rolled up, but when we open the case, the smell of ink still lingers in the air."

"Misleading but principled idealist"

Japan said Ann was a criminal and terrorist and refused to hand over his body. They never found it.

Seoul and Beijing have previously had tense ties with Tokyo in their move to commemorate the AHN, and even briefly sparked diplomatic disputes in 2013.

In 2014, Japan criticized a memorial built in China to commemorate AHN, according to BBC News. A Japanese government spokesperson named him a terrorist after opening in China-Kria Memorial Hall in Harbin, China.

Eugene Y. Park, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said his Japanese abductors preserved his calligraphy “reflecting cultural and political contradictions in East Asia in the early 20th century.”

In his trial, Ahn identified himself as a Korean soldier, defined his assassination of Ito as a military operation, and envisioned a joint East Asia (including South Korea, China and Japan), somewhat like today’s EU.

"Some Japanese may see him as a misleading but principled idealist," Parker told AFP.

He said his calligraphy focused on values ​​such as peace and morality, "even when he opposed them politically, it resonated with culture."

“At a time when Japan’s own imperial identity was uneasy, maintaining his work revealed a deeper tension between respecting moral courage and the pursuit of colonial rule.”

In 2023, the South Korean conglomerate Global SAE-A Group purchased a calligraphy from AHN for a record 1.95 billion won (nearly US$1.4 million).

The work "Green Bamboo" was sold to the family of South Korea's LS Group at auction last month.

"We expressed our intention to bring the work back to South Korea and share it with the public," the Seoul Auction said.

Lee Sang-Hyun of the LS Group family told AFP that his mother "hopefully many citizens will see the work and will also study it" and they are considering donating it to a state agency.

Anne (Ahn) became a Catholic as a teenager and ended his autobiography with the words of Nicolas Joseph Marie Wilhelm, a French pastor and missionary, stationed in South Korea, where he went to prison to see the activist and gave him a guilty plea.

The pastor - who also baptized Ahn and was a long-time friend - was disciplined for travel and was later forced to return to France.

William told Arn, "The merciful Lord will never abandon you." "He will definitely bring you in, so please rest assured and peaceful."