S. Korea agrees to list Japan's war-linked mine as UNESCO heritage

SEOUL, July 27 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's foreign ministry said Saturday that the country agreed to list Japan's war-linked gold mine as a UNESCO world heritage site on condition that Tokyo will take preemptive measures to reflect the entire history of the mine on the site.

The ministry said in a statement that the UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC) decided to inscribe the "Sado Island Gold Mines," a gold mine on Sado Island associated with the Korean Peninsula's wartime forced labor, on the World Heritage List during its meeting earlier in the day in New Delhi, India.

It noted that the South Korean government agreed to the inscription of the mine on the premise that Japan faithfully implements the recommendation of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), an advisory body to the UNESCO WHC, to reflect the "entire history" of the mine "on the site" and takes preemptive measures for it.

South Korean historians say thousands of Koreans were forced by Imperial Japan into heavy labor for the gold mine, which was turned into facilities to manufacture war-related materials during World War II when the Korean Peninsula was under Japan's colonial rule. The mine was shut down in 1989.

Before the agreement, Seoul had protested against Japan's bid to list the Sado mine, urging Tokyo to fully implement the follow-up measures relevant to the inscription in 2015 of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution sites.