People visit the Sihang Warehouse War Memorial Hall in Shanghai on China's National Memorial Day for Nanjing Massacre Victims on Dec. 13, 2017. (Photo: China News Service/Tang Yanjun)

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of China-South Korea diplomatic ties in 1992, the Independence Hall of Korea, a history museum in Cheonan, South Korea, announced on Monday a plan to set up a memorial hall dedicated to the two peoples' joint fight against Japanese aggression prior to and during World War II, so as to display the historical basis of the friendly relations between the two countries and meanwhile hope to attract more Chinese tourists.

The plan was announced as a new curator took office at the hall. The new curator told the South Korean media that they plan to build one of eight exhibition halls as a place to display historical records focused on the joint struggle of Koreans and Chinese during Japan's colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

The South Korean government is also considering operating an "international hall" with additional elements such as support for the Korean Restoration Army from the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

"This is an active measure to discover close connections between two nations when they saw tough challenges in history," Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Peking University, told the Global Times on Tuesday, expressing his approval for the plan.

He added that the two countries have much common ground and that the fight against Japanese aggression was the basis for much of their historical cooperation, noting that the Korean Provisional Government was active in Shanghai and later in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality.

The official Sina Weibo account of the Museum of the War of Peoples Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in China posted the news of the new memorial hall on Tuesday.

Zhang said that the two museums in China and South Korea should cooperate in the future to jointly uncover more historical materials and hold exhibitions to convey messages about the two countries' friendly historical relations to the public.

Opened on August 15, 1987, The Independence Hall of Korea is the largest exhibition facility in South Korea, with a total floor area of 23,424 square meters and more than 90,000 historical relics. The museum focuses on the independence movements of the Japanese colonial period.