Calligraphy by a South Korean independence hero, created while awaiting execution for assassinating a Japanese leader, is breaking new auction records in Seoul, as the country's ultra-rich seek to bring historic artwork home, CBS News reports.

Revered in the South for his efforts to defend the country against Japanese encroachment, Ahn Jung-geun is best known for his dramatic, high-stakes assassination of Japan's first prime minister, Ito Hirobumi, in 1909 at a train station in Harbin.

He was hanged for the killing by Japanese authorities in 1910, just months before Tokyo formally annexed the Korean Peninsula, ushering in a brutal period of occupation that lasted until the end of World War II.

Now, more than a century after his death, the calligraphy Ahn created in his prison cell during his final days—typically at the request of Japanese officials—is drawing fresh attention in Seoul's glitzy art scene.

In 2023, the Global Sae-A Group, a South Korean conglomerate, purchased one of Ahn's calligraphies for a record-breaking 1.95 billion won (nearly $1.4 million).

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