Korea holds ceremony marking return of lion statues to China

A ceremony marking the return of a pair of Qing Dynasty stone lion statues from a Seoul museum to the Chinese government took place Thursday, officials said. The event took place some six months after the two countries signed a document during a summit meeting in January, pledging the return of the statues purchased by the Kansong Art and Culture Foundation in the 1930s. At the ceremony held at Kansong Art Museum, the museum and the National Museum of Korea (NMK) signed a document on transferring the ownership of the statues and the statues themselves to Chinese cultural authorities.

Attending Thursday's event were NMK Director You Hong-june, Kansong Art Museum Director Chun In-keon, Rao Quan, chief of China's National Cultural Heritage Administration, and Chinese Ambassador to South Korea Dai Bing. The statues, each standing 1.9 meters tall and weighing 1.

25 tons, were purchased at an auction market in Japan and had been a symbolic fixture welcoming visitors at the museum in Seoul. Korean art collector "Kansong" Jeon Hyeong-pil, who died in 1962, is believed to have said the statues shou