TOKYO, May 8 -- Japanand South Koreamay be reaching a volatile impasse in a thorny issue regarding Japan's plans to present a number of industrial sites to UNESCO to be listed for their historical value to Japan's development, but the move has infuriated South Korea, as the sites were formerly used as slave labor camps for Koreans during World War II under Japanese Imperial rule, with the some of the sites the scenes of numerous Korean fatalities.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abesaid Friday he is planning to seek the understanding of South Korea and other countries opposed to Japan's application to have 23 of its industrial sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution, listed as UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Abe said in a meeting with Takeo Kawamura, a senior leader of a parliamentary group that works for friendship with South Korea, that the move to try and gain South Korea's understanding might take some of the heat out of the current conflict.

While Kawamura told the press Friday that his group supports the legitimacy of Japan's stance on the issue, Abe himself said his government hopes to make a monumental effort to gain the formal support of UNESCO, while keeping a watch full eye on South Korea's maneuvers.

According to Japan's Cultural Affairs Agency, which falls under the auspices of the Japanese Ministry of Education and backed by the foreign ministry, Japan intends to list industrial sites including coal mines, shipyards and steel mills, which date back as far as the 1850s, as UN. world heritage sites, claiming their " historic value."

Japanese sources have said the historic sites are evidence of the nation's industrial modernizations and progress and is angling for UNESCO to list the sites for their relevance to Japan's industrial development in their use prior to World War II.

But the move has outraged South Korea and drawn harsh condemnation from its foreign ministry, as the 23 sites were used as forced labor camps where around 60,000 Koreans were held captive and forced to work during Japan's colonization of the Korean Peninsula, with the severity of labor causing the deaths of 94 workers at the sites.

South Korea has urged Japan to fully admit its use of Koreans as forced laborers during its brutal military occupation and divulge the sites' connections to the wartime labor camps.

The latest dispute between Japan and South Korea adds to legitimate claims by the latter, and other countries occupied by Japan during WWII, such as China -- also brutalized by Japan's militarism -- that Japan is once again attempting to gloss over its wartime atrocities and put a positive spin on its Imperial Army's heinous wartime treatment of its captives.

But Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday shrugged off South Koreas claims as not being applicable and said he would continue to seek Seoul's understanding on the matter and stood by the government's stance that the sites are of historic value.

"The industrial sites were recommended based on their outstanding universal value," Kishida said at a press conference, adding, "Our country hopes this case will be discussed from a scientific and professional viewpoint."

Japan's foreign minister has accused South Korea of confusing the "time period," "historical status" and the "background of the sites," with the reality of history.

Japanese Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura, for his part, has taken a softer tone, however, stating that Japan needs to spend more time to fully explain the situation to South Korea and take a patient stance when giving explanations and waiting for reactions on the sensitive issue.

But other Cabinet ministers on Friday went on the offensive, calling on South Korea to stop using the situation as another excuse to politicize Japan's actions.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, Japan's top government spokesperson, also told a press conference Friday that, "South Korea should not make political assertions on the matter," adding that the recommendation for World Heritage listing was "based on experts' views."

But such notions have rattled factions in South Korea who believe that Japan is once again trying to whitewash its wartime atrocities.

The "comfort women" issue, pertaining to Japan's forcible kidnapping, enslavement and rape of sex slaves during the war also remains a thorny issue between the two sides, that remains unsettled and the latest issue of slave labor at the 23 industrial sites is another serious contention that has also severely impacted diplomatic ties between Tokyo and Seoul.

Seoul believes, along with some of Japan's other closest neighbors, that Japan has yet to face its wartime atrocities squarely and show adequate remorse to the countries it brutalized.

Japan is increasingly under the spotlight following two highly publicized speeches by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the latest of which took place last week before the United StatesCongress, during which the prime minister skirted key issues such as Japan's wartime sexual slavery and semantically dodged the nation's historically proven culpability and the chance to offer an apology and offer remorse.

Abe's failure thus far to adequately atone for Japan's wartime brutality on global forums where he has been granted the world's ear, whilst further drawing the ire of the likes of South Korea and China, has also led to 190 international historians issuing a joint statement calling for Tokyo to face history squarely, with a separate demand also being made by members of the American Historical Association earlier this year.

The Japanese prime minister will deliver a war statement in August on the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, where he has been urged by the international community, his own party members, opposition party members, former leaders and members of the royal family, to adhere to former administrations' landmark admissions of wartime aggression and brutality and declarations of heartfelt remorse.

South Korea's foreign ministry, at a bare minimum, is calling for Japan to drop seven of the sites that employed Korean forced labor, or, alternatively, for Japan to apply to list the sites with UNESCO in a similar way Auschwitz-Birkenau has been listed as a Nazi concentration camp.

In a bid to resolve the matter, as diplomatic ties between Tokyo and Seoul become yet further strained, Japan and South Korea are eyeing holding talks, although no fixed dates or times have been set, Kishida and Suga said Friday, although other political sources close to the matter said the bilateral talks may happen towards the end of this month.