Meeting due in Tokyo over UNESCO nod
By Yi Whan-woo
Korea and Japan are set to hold a meeting on May 22 to discuss Tokyo's bid to enlist its wartime industrial facilities as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) world heritage sites, the government said Friday.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said senior officials from the two sides will meet in Tokyo, to discuss the matter.
The meeting will come after a UNESCO advisory panel, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), on Monday endorsed Japan's proposal to put 23 sites of the Meiji Industrial Revolution on the world heritage list.
The World Heritage Committee (WHC) under UNESCO will decide whether to accept Japan's bid during its annual session in Bonn, Germany, from June 28 to July 8.
Korea has been against such a bid, claiming some 59,000 Koreans underwent forced labor at seven of the 23 facilities during Japanese colonial rule (1910-45).
According the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the seven controversial sites include shipyards, coal mines and steelworks where Korean laborers were mobilized to produce coal, and build military equipment such as warships and torpedoes.
Among them is the Hashima undersea coal mine off Nagasaki, known as the "Battleship Island."
In its bid, Japan instead underscored that the candidate sites across the country's eight prefectures are evidence of the rapid industrialization of the first non-Western nation and therefore "a noteworthy event in world history."
Tokyo said that all 23 sites were built between 1850 and 1910, a move seen as an attempt to avoid any argument with Korea.
The Korean delegates are expected to address worries that enlisting such sites, in which slave labor was prevalent during colonial rule, as an UNESCO cultural heritage site would distort history because Japan does not mention such negative historical facts.
"The responsibility for politicizing UNESCO lies with Japan," a foreign ministry official said. "UNESCO wants South Korea and Japan to reach a consensus over the problem through dialogue."
It is widely believed that the WHC will give the upper hand to Japan, given the fact it has only disagreed with ICOMOS's endorsement once over the past 10 years.
Both Korea and Japan are member states of the 21 seat WHC. Other members include the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.
By Yi Whan-woo
Korea and Japan are set to hold a meeting on May 22 to discuss Tokyo's bid to enlist its wartime industrial facilities as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) world heritage sites, the government said Friday.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said senior officials from the two sides will meet in Tokyo, to discuss the matter.
The meeting will come after a UNESCO advisory panel, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), on Monday endorsed Japan's proposal to put 23 sites of the Meiji Industrial Revolution on the world heritage list.
The World Heritage Committee (WHC) under UNESCO will decide whether to accept Japan's bid during its annual session in Bonn, Germany, from June 28 to July 8.
Korea has been against such a bid, claiming some 59,000 Koreans underwent forced labor at seven of the 23 facilities during Japanese colonial rule (1910-45).
According the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the seven controversial sites include shipyards, coal mines and steelworks where Korean laborers were mobilized to produce coal, and build military equipment such as warships and torpedoes.
Among them is the Hashima undersea coal mine off Nagasaki, known as the "Battleship Island."
In its bid, Japan instead underscored that the candidate sites across the country's eight prefectures are evidence of the rapid industrialization of the first non-Western nation and therefore "a noteworthy event in world history."
Tokyo said that all 23 sites were built between 1850 and 1910, a move seen as an attempt to avoid any argument with Korea.
The Korean delegates are expected to address worries that enlisting such sites, in which slave labor was prevalent during colonial rule, as an UNESCO cultural heritage site would distort history because Japan does not mention such negative historical facts.
"The responsibility for politicizing UNESCO lies with Japan," a foreign ministry official said. "UNESCO wants South Korea and Japan to reach a consensus over the problem through dialogue."
It is widely believed that the WHC will give the upper hand to Japan, given the fact it has only disagreed with ICOMOS's endorsement once over the past 10 years.
Both Korea and Japan are member states of the 21 seat WHC. Other members include the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.
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