Korea, Japan may resolve UNESCO row

By Yi Whan-woo

Tokyo may address Seoul’s demands regarding its bid for world heritage recognition of industrial sites built during Japanese colonial rule of Korea (1910-45).

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday it hopes to strike a deal over Japan’s campaign to put 23 Meiji Industrial Revolution sites on the UNESCO World Heritage list in their third round of discussions slated for this week.

Seoul has been asking Tokyo to address slave labor by Koreans at seven of the 23 sites, including shipyards, coal mines and steelworks, across Japan’s eight prefectures.

“The two countries are on the same track in drawing out an agreement in harmony as Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said Sunday,” an official at the ministry’s Northeast Asian Affairs Bureau said on condition of anonymity. “We hope to close any gaps very soon.”

He added he finds reports from Japanese media, Monday, over the issue “very convincing.”

The official, however, turned down speculation that the two sides may settle their dispute by having Japan put notice boards on the seven sites about forced labor camps. Some 57,000 Koreans worked and 94 of them died while working to build warships, weapons and produce supplies for the Japanese military.

“We’re considering more effective measures to deliver the historical facts,” he said.

Following his talks with Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, Sunday, Yun said the two countries “found common ground” to reach a deal harmoniously over Japan’s UNESCO campaign.

Yun made was on a two-day trip to Japan.

“We expect to reveal the details to the public soon when the two sides hold further discussions,” he said.

Citing a Japanese official, Yomiuri Shimbun said Yun accepted Kishida’s proposal to make public that conscription of Korean workers occurred at seven facilities.

Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that the two governments have taken a clear stance to improve ties at the 50th anniversary of normalization of their diplomatic relations.

The diplomatic sources said Japan may find it burdensome to not settle the dispute before the World Heritage Committee (WHC)’s General Assembly slated for June 28-July 8 in Bonn, Germany.

Twenty-one members of the WHC, which is under UNESCO, will vote on whether to accept Japan’s bid during their meeting. The member states include Korea and Japan, as well as Germany, which has urged Japan to correctly address its history.

In addition, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, a UNESCO-advisory panel, said on May 25 that Japan failed “to describe the complex and broad social and political changes that industrial technology brought about in its campaign.” The panel added the relevant material should be provided for complementation.

Korea and Japan have held two rounds of discussions over Tokyo’s UNESO bid ― on May 22 and June 9, respectively.

Tokyo had previously ignored Seoul’s demands, saying its neighbor was making “political assertions.” Japan argued that the 23 sites were built between 1850 and 1910, a move regarded as an attempt to avoid arguments with Korea.

This was the first time Seoul’s top diplomat visited Japan under the Park Geun-hye administration since she took office in February 2013.

The bilateral talks took place under an “amicable atmosphere,” according to some observers.

Yun and Kishida, however, failed to narrow gaps over Tokyo’s wartime sex slavery, according to The Asahi Shimbun. Japan’s sexual enslavement of the Korean women has been a major stumbling block for worsening Korea-Japan relations in the past few years.