Japan’s push for UNESCO to list divisive gold mine delayed #Japanese #push #UNESCO #list #divisive #gold #delayed Welcome to OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
TOKYO (AP) – Japan’s push to gain UNESCO World Heritage recognition for a former gold mine key to the country’s industrialization will be delayed because its implementation was inadequate, officials said Thursday.
South Korea protested the UNESCO-listed efforts of the mine on Sado Island, and this has heightened their diplomatic frictions over the Japanese colonization of the Korean peninsula and its actions in World War II.
The mine in northern Japan was in operation for nearly 400 years and was once the largest gold producer in the world before closing in 1989.
South Korea opposed the registration as inappropriate because of the Japanese war abuse of Korean workers. Seoul has said that Koreans brought to Japan during the colonization of the Korean Peninsula in 1910-1945 were forced to work in the mine.
Historians say Japan used hundreds of thousands of Korean workers, including those forcibly removed from the Korean peninsula, in mines and factories to make up for the labor shortage, as most men of working age went to battlefields in Asia and the Pacific. were sent.
The city and prefecture of Niigata praise the mine of Sado Island for developing mining technology before and after industrialization. There is no mention of the use of Korean workers in wartime.
Japan submitted a letter of recommendation earlier this year to nominate the mine to UNESCO and hoped it would be listed next year. However, on Thursday, Culture Minister Shinsuke Suematsu told reporters that registration next year “would be difficult”.
Suematsu said the UNESCO agency cited “inadequacy” in the content of the application, but he was not more specific. “It is extremely regrettable, but we have decided to resubmit the documents,” he said. An interim document will be submitted at the end of September and a formal version on February 1 next year.
Another Japanese site with similar sensitivities was recognized by UNESCO in 2015. Gunkanjima, or Battleship Island, in Nagasaki Prefecture, was a former coal mining site recognized as important to Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution. South Korea protested that the site made no mention of Koreans toiling on the island, prompting a UNESCO decision urging Japan to present a more balanced history.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government previously considered delaying the Sado Island nomination but apparently backtracked after mounting pressure from ultra-conservatives in the ruling party known for their efforts to whitewash Japan’s wartime past.
Relations between Tokyo and Seoul are at their lowest levels in years as a result of disputes arising from Japan’s* abuse of Korean women and the use of forced laborers before and during World War II.