Japan refuses to address slave labor at UNESCO site

Japan does not plan to provide information about conscripted Korean laborers this year on one of its UNESCO World Heritage sites, although this is against a promise made to UNESCO to ensure its listing, according to the diplomatic sources, Sunday.

Citing an official at Nagasaki city government, the sources said Tokyo does not have a plan to set up an information center and address the forced labor of Koreans on Hashima Island.

Administered by the city government, Hashima Island is one of the 23 Meiji-era industrial sites that won World Heritage status in 2015 for illustrating Japan’s rapid industrializa- tion as the first non-Western nation.

Once a densely-populated coal-mine, Hashima Island is also among the seven of the 23 sites that were notorious for slave labor of an estimated 60,000 Koreans during the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule.

Japanese Ambassador to UNESCO Kuni Sato promised relevant measures to address exploitation of Korean workers as a condition for the 23 sites to win World Heritage status in 2015.

“The city government claims it will act accordingly when it gets instructions from the central government,” a source said. “And it also claims that it has not received any instruction regarding the information center although the matter should be dealt with jointly at the central and local government levels.”