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| Japanese Ambassador Koji Tomita is called into South Korea's foreign ministry in Seoul, Monday. Yonhap |
South Korea called in Japan's top envoy in Seoul on Monday to lodge a protest after Tokyo failed to honor wartime forced labor victims at an information center on industrial revolution sites registered on UNESCO's World Heritage list.
Second Vice Foreign Minister Lee Tae-ho expressed regrets to Japanese Ambassador Koji Tomita, hours after the Industrial Heritage Information Center showcasing 23 Meiji-era sites opened to the public without a commemorative measure for the victims.
The center, launched in March, had been closed due to the coronavirus.
Among the 23 sites that were put on the UNESCO list in 2015 is notorious Hashima Island, also known as Battleship Island, where many Koreans were forced into labor ― a reason South Korea had opposed the designation.
In regard to the 2015 designation, Tokyo said it would establish the information center to remember the victims, recognizing "Koreans and others who were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites."
Tokyo also said it would "sincerely respond" to a recommendation by the International Council on Monuments and Sites, an advisory group of UNESCO, that an "interpretive strategy" should allow an "understanding of the full history of each site."
On Sunday, a pool of Tokyo-based correspondents toured the center, which had been closed soon after its opening in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The center focused on the achievements of Japan's industrial revolution in areas of iron, steel and coal mining, while giving short shrift to the suffering of Korean victims during Japan's colonial rule from 1910-45. (Yonhap)
