Press Briefing
Spokesperson and Deputy Minister for Public Affairs Choi Youngsam
December 28, 2021  14:30  KST
 
Good afternoon. Let me start today’s briefing.

There has just been a news report that Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs has designated the Sado mine in Niigata Prefecture as a candidate for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Let me read the MOFA Spokesperson’s commentary on that.

The Korean government finds it deeply deplorable that while the Japanese government has not fully implemented the World Heritage Committee’s decisions and its own pledge concerning the “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution,” Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs has designated the “Sado mine,” another site where Koreans were forced to work, as a candidate for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List; and calls for its immediate retraction.

Recalling the World Heritage Committee’s decision at its 44th session in July expressing strong regret on Japan’s non-fulfilment of the follow-up to the inscription of the “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution,” where Koreans and others such as Prisoners of War were forced to work, and calling for its full implementation, the Korean government strongly urges Japan to first fully implement the relevant decisions of the Committee.

The Korean government will sternly respond with the international community including UNESCO to prevent sites where people were forced to work against their will from being inscribed as a World Heritage site without sufficient explanation of such historical facts.