ed Abusing UNESCO

Japan has sufficient reasons to be proud of itself as the first modernized country in non-Western societies. So Tokyo’s attempt to put 23 of its old industrial facilities on UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites may be reasonable enough, too. Except, seven of those facilities, including mines and shipyards, were where nearly 60,000 Korean forced laborers toiled under the harshest conditions. Up to 1,000 of these laborers died.

This means that from Korea’s point of view, the seven sites of modern Japan should go down on the list, if they have to be listed at all, as “negative” heritage ― like Auschwitz concentration camp ― that cruelly exploited the blood, sweat and tears of colonized people.

In the Nagasaki Shipyard, for example, the American atomic bombing killed 1,800 Koreans. In the underground mines on Hashima Island, or “Prison Island,” 100 Koreans died of fatigue, hunger and beating.

Tokyo’s attempt is all the more regrettable because the Japanese government has steadfastly refused to compensate properly the surviving laborers who filed indemnity suits ― and won in Korea’s Supreme Court. As it did with “comfort women,” Tokyo maintains, wrongly, that the 1965 Basic Treaty has extinguished all individual rights to indemnity.

The Japanese government, while turning a blind eye to the fact that these facilities were hellish workplaces for so many Koreans and that the facilities were backup bases in World War II ― is instead trying to turn them into part of a “proud cultural heritage” that helped modernize the country. Tokyo’s dual standards ― demonstrating proud traditions and hiding shameful ones ― is also seen in its registering of the Hiroshima bombing memorial on the UNESCO list, highlighting Japan as a nuclear victim while camouflaging its initiation of the Pacific War.

Nothing would be more glaring in this regard than Japan’s scheme also to register the wills and other writings of the kamikaze suicide pilots on the UNESCO “Memory of the World” register of important papers and manuscripts, alongside the Magna Carta, Das Kapital, and Diaries of Anne Frank. It is not important how many of the dead pilots volunteered and how many were forced to sacrifice. What defies our understanding is how a government can attempt to justify its past acts in this way, because forcing young men to take part in a mass suicide can never be rationalized under any pretext.

All this makes one wonder whether the Japanese government is using use UNESCO list of world heritage as a laundry to whitewash Japan’s disgraceful history.

The Park Geun-hye administration seems to have been caught off guard, yet again, in diplomatic competition with the government of Shinzo Abe.

Seoul must dissuade the 21 member nations of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee from allowing Tokyo to glorify ― not reflect on ― its war history and the victims of war.

The U.N. agency for its part should stick to its original purpose, instead of being swayed by its biggest financial contributor.