For most Koreans, the Wangfujing shopping street in central Beijing is a bustling tourist destination filled with Western-style department stores and shops where they can buy everything they can name.

But, few of them might know that there is an aging building near Wangfujing, which was used by the Japanese military police as a prison where Yi Yuk-sa (1904-1944), one of Korea's most famous poets and an independence activist, died.

Universally known by his pen name, Yi's works symbolize the spirit of Korean independence movements against Japan's harsh colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

In the 1930s, Yi studied in China, while making frequent contacts with a number of Korean independence activists.

Yi, who suffered symptoms of lung disease, was arrested in 1943 and transferred to the prison of the Japanese military police in Beijing, where he endured brutal torture. About 19 months before the Korean Peninsula was liberated, Yi died in the prison.

As the 70th anniversary of the Korean Peninsula's liberation from the Japanese colonial rule approaches, Yonhap News Agency recently visited the former prison of the Japanese military police.

Like many aging buildings in Beijing, the former prison is facing demolition.

Park Han-yong, an official at the Seoul-based Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities, told Yonhap by telephone that, "Along with Shanghai, Beijing was one of the centers for anti-Japanese independence movements for Korean activists."

"But, efforts to preserve historical sites in Beijing have been neglected, compared with Shanghai," Park said. The institute is conducting research work on Koreans who gained by collaborating with Japan during the colonial rule.

Every year, South Korea has marked the foundation of Korea's provisional government in Shanghai, where the interim government was based.

Japan's harsh colonial rule left deep scars on the hearts of Koreans. During that period, Koreans were banned from using their own language at schools and forced to adopt Japanese names.

Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were also mobilized as forced laborers and sex slaves. (Yonhap)