Yielding to electoral sirens and the risk of a new diplomatic dispute, Japan must validate, Tuesday 1er February, the candidacy of the gold and silver mines of the island of Sado for registration as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Announced on January 28 by the Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, the decision immediately caused a reaction from South Korea, which “regretted” that Japan promotes a site “where Koreans were forced to work during World War II,” according to Choi Young-sam, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Exploited since the XVIIand century, these mines made Sado the world’s leading gold mining site, the Japanese cultural affairs agency said. Production intensified with the industrialization of Japan in the Meiji era (1868-1912) and continued until the mines were finally closed in 1989. During the Second World War, more than 2,000 Koreans – the peninsula was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945 – were forced to work there.
Risk of new litigation
Hence the anger of Seoul, exacerbated by the precedent of the inscription, in 2015, to the World Heritage of twenty-three industrial sites of the Meiji era, including the island of Hashima, off Nagasaki (southwest ), built around a coal mine where Koreans also had to work in extremely harsh conditions. Seoul had accepted this registration in return for Tokyo’s promise to inform the public about the Korean workers, admitting that they were “brought in against their will and forced to work in harsh conditions”. This has only been partially done, regretted, in July 2021, the World Heritage Committee.
This liability could threaten the candidacy of the Sado mines, as South Korea could block their registration. Fumio Kishida took the risk of a new diplomatic dispute, in particular to please the conservative fringe of the Liberal Democratic Party (PLD, in power) hostile to any concession to the Koreans on forced labor. This file has poisoned bilateral relations since the conviction, in South Korea, in 2018, of Japanese industrialists for the exploitation of Korean workers during the war.
The Japanese decision also responds to electoral considerations. The World Heritage listing is popular in the department of Niigata, on which the island of Sado depends, and which must elect its governor in May, now close to the PLD.