The Republic of Korea’s main opposition party and other locals criticized the country’s government after it agreed to list a Japanese gold mine linked to wartime forced labor as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“The Sado mine, a symbol of forced labor of Korean people during the Japanese colonial era, was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site with the approval of the administration of President Yoon Suk-yeol,” said Park Chan-dae, the floor leader of the Democratic Party (DP), during the DP’s Supreme Council meeting on July 29.

“By endorsing Japan’s distortion of war crimes, it becomes confusing to tell whether our government is the government of the ROK or a government under Japan’s colonial rule,” Park said.

READ MORE: S.Korea against Japan bid to get war-linked mine on heritage list

Located off the coast of Niigata in northern Japan, the Sado Island Gold Mines were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list on July 27.

The former mining complex is associated with the Korean Peninsula’s wartime forced labor and its inclusion on the list at a meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in New Delhi came only after the ROK had dropped its objection.

In a statement, the ROK Foreign Ministry said that the country agreed to list Sado Island Gold Mines as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on condition that Japan will take preemptive measures to reflect the “entire history” of the mine at the site.

Japan has committed to holding an annual memorial service starting this year for the Koreans forced to work in the Sado mines, the ROK Foreign Ministry said. They added that the service will be scheduled every July or August on Sado Island.

At the UNESCO WHC meeting, Japan said it installed new exhibition material to explain the severe conditions endured by Korean laborers.

According to ROK historians, thousands of Koreans were forced by Imperial Japan into heavy labor at the gold mine, which was repurposed to manufacture war-related materials during World War II. The Korean Peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule from 1910-45.

ALSO READ: Japan seeks mine listing by UNESCO despite ROK protest

Japan has been pushing to list the former gold mine, which shut down in 1989, as a World Heritage Site for years. The ROK opposed the proposal as it said Japan initially intended to omit the mine’s history involving forced labor.

Park from the DP noted that Japan did not comply with its promise to specify records of forced labor when Hashima Island, near Nagasaki, was listed as a World Heritage Site in 2015.

He added that even today, Japan does not recognize the forced mobilization of Korean people.

After Hashima Island, more commonly known by its nickname “Gunkanjima”, was recognized as a World Heritage Site, the UNESCO WHC found in 2021 that information on the island’s history of forced labor of Korean and others was insufficient.

Park said the DP will conduct a thorough investigation into the Yoon administration’s “diplomatic incompetence and disasters”, and hold those responsible to account.

On social media, many people in the ROK also expressed their frustration over the listing of the Sado Island mine.

READ MORE: Japan to ignore ROK objection to mine listing by UNESCO

“The Sado mine is a site filled with the hardships, blood, and tears of Korean laborers and it makes me suspicious that the Japanese government is going to develop it as a tourist attraction without any reflection (on its history),” a commenter surnamed Kang wrote on Facebook.

Before listing such places as World Heritage Sites, Kang said there should be consideration of the pain and suffering of those persecuted there, as with the Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945) in Poland and the slave-trading center at the Island of Goree in Senegal.  

The most important thing is to record the historical facts on the Sado mine as many people did not know that Koreans worked in the mine even after visiting the site, said Fumitoshi Yoshizawa, a professor at Japan’s Niigata University of International and Information Studies.

In an interview with the ROK’s Yonhap News Agency published on July 28, Yoshizawa said there is no record of forced labor of Koreans mentioned at the Sado mine site except that “Koreans have been recruited and returned”.

When listed as a world heritage site, it is valuable only if both the bright and dark sides of history are preserved, said Yoshizawa.

Contact the writer at kelly@chinadailyapac.com