Seoul protests against Tokyo’s decision to include the UNESCO World Heritage application of the Gold Extraction Site, Forced Place of Work for Thousands of Koreans during the Second World War.
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Assigning the electoral sirens and at the risk of a new diplomatic dispute, Japan must validate, Tuesday 1 February, the candidacy of the gold and silver mines of the island of Sado to UNESCO World Heritage Registration.
Announced on January 28 by the Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, the decision immediately reacted South Korea, which “regretted” that Japan promotes a site “where Koreans were forced to work during the Second World War World “, according to Choi Young-Sam, spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Operated since the XVII E century, these mines have made Sado the first Global Gold Extraction website, explained the Japanese Cultural Affairs Agency. The production intensified at the time of the industrialization of Japan in the Meiji era (1868-1912) and continued until the final closure of mines in 1989. During the second worldwide conflict, more than 2,000 Korean – The Peninsula was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945 – were forced to work there.
Risk of a new dispute
Where the anger of Seoul, exacerbated by the previous registration precedent, in 2015, World Heritage of twenty-three industrial sites of the Meiji era, including the island of Hashima, off Nagasaki ( Southwest), arranged around a coal mine where Koreans also had to work in extremely hard conditions. Seoul had accepted this registration in exchange for the promise of Tokyo to inform the public about Korean workers, admitting that they were “brought against their will and forced to work under difficult conditions”. What was only partially done, in July 2021, regretted the World Heritage Committee.
This liability could threaten the application of the Mines of Sado, South Korea can block their registration. Fumio Kishida took the risk of a new diplomatic dispute, including to complain to the conservative brange of the Liberal-Democratic Party (PLD, in power) hostile to any concession to Koreans on forced labor. This file poisons bilateral relations since the conviction, in South Korea, in 2018, of Japanese industrialists for the exploitation of Korean workers during the war.
The Nippone decision also meets electoral considerations. World Heritage registration is popular in the department of Niigata, which depends on the island of Sado, and which must elect its governor in May, now near the PLD.