CHONGQING/SEOUL, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- In the middle of the concrete jungle of southwest China's Chongqing Municipality sits a low-rise building with an ancient gray brick exterior. Engraved on the gate is the "provisional government of the Republic of Korea" in Korean, Chinese and English.
The architecture, now a museum chronicling stories of the Korean Peninsula and China's joint fight against Japanese aggression, was provided to the Korean Provisional Government as an office site in 1940.
The museum has drawn many visitors as an embodiment of the friendship in turbulent times. As of July 31, the museum had received over 28,000 visitors this year, including some 6,000 from South Korea.
The architecture had been turned into a residential building after senior government officials returned to their homeland in 1945, and a company planned to develop the land for real estate.
Deputy curator of the museum Xia Xue said the Chongqing municipal government compensated the company and restored the architecture to its original appearance. The museum was officially opened in August 1995.
It now exhibits many news reports from the Chinese newspaper Xinhua Daily on the Korean Peninsula's anti-Japanese independence movement and the Korean Liberation Army movement in the 1940s.
"It shows that even when Chongqing people were deeply mired in the war, they gave the most genuine reception and help within their power for the members of the provisional government," Xia said.
The city's name "Chongqing" is now inscribed on the wall of the Kim Koo Museum & Library in Seoul, among other cities where the then president of the Korean Provisional Government, Kim Koo, had resided.
Many Korean visitors were inspired by the history recorded in the Kim Koo Museum & Library and came to Chongqing to pay tribute to the roots of today's Republic of Korea.
Hwang Shin-jun, a 28-year-old visitor from South Korea, left a message on the museum's guest book on Aug. 3: "I am grateful for the Chongqing municipal government to preserve the site of the Korean Provisional Government."
"May the friendly relation between China and South Korea last forever," another Korean visitor named Song Se-ho wrote in the guest book. ■
