South Korea asked a U.N. organization Tuesday to help foil Japan's attempt to list facilities served by wartime slave laborers as world heritage sites.
The Shinzo Abe administration is pushing to win UNESCO's recognition for 23 coal mines, shipyards and other early industrial sites. The candidates include seven facilities where nearly 60,000 Koreans were coerced into slave labor during World War II. Japan colonized Korea from 1910-45.
Seoul's new ambassador to UNESCO, Lee Byeong-hyun, delivered his government's strong protest of Tokyo's campaign in presenting his credentials to Irina Bokova, the current director-general of the Paris-based body.
"It is worrisome that (Japan) is seeking to list those as world heritage sites without apology or remorse over painful history involving such facilities where Koreans were forced to work during Japan's occupation of Korea," the envoy said.
Japan's conscription of Koreans as slave workers is another symbol of its wartime atrocities, along with the enslavement of women as sex slaves.
The two Northeast Asian neighbors have already been in a dispute over Japan's refusal to properly apologize to the victims of Japan's sex slavery during World War II and compensate them.
Historians say more than 200,000 women, mostly Koreans, were forced to serve as sex slaves during the war, when the Korean Peninsula was under the Japanese colonial rule.
The envoy asked UNESCO to play a "construction role" on the issue.
In response, the UNESCO chief expressed hope that South Korea and Japan will resolve the matter through dialogue.
She said the goal of UNESCO's world heritage program is to help countries and people reconcile and move toward a future. (Yonhap)
