hankyoreh

The comfort woman memorial in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. (Hankyoreh archives)

UNESCO has decided to set up a task force to change its Memory of the World Programme system, a Japanese paper reported.

The Sankei Shimbun newspaper reported on Sept. 13 that UNESCO plans to establish a task force within the year to develop a concrete plan for changing the Memory of the World (MOW) review system. The task force plans to reexamine the MOW review and registration methods and draft a recommendation around May of next year. If approved by the UNESCO Executive Board in Oct. 2019, the recommendation would go into effect as of 2020.

Currently, practical review duties for the UNESCO Memory of the World are handled by the International Advisory Committee (IAC), with the UNESCO director-general playing only an indirect role in approving the decisions. The IAC consists of 14 experts in the area of heritage preservation selected by the UNESCO director-general.

Japan first began raising objections to the system with the 2015 MOW registration of archival materials related to the Nanking (Nanjing) Massacre committed by Japanese troops in China. Japan responded by claiming that the MOW system was being abused for political ends, contending that the reviews themselves were being conducted behind closed doors by heritage preservation experts alone.

Its worries grew after an international committee formed by 14 groups from eight countries (including South Korea, China, and Japan) for the MOW registration of materials related to the Japanese military comfort women applied in 2016 to register 2,744 archival materials under the name “Voices of the ‘Comfort Women.’”

In a bid to block the materials’ registration, Japan withheld payment of its share of funding for UNESCO. Japan is currently responsible for the largest funding share, with the US declining to pay after the 2011 admission of Palestine to UNESCO.

In Oct. 2017, UNESCO made the decision to change its current system at a meeting of its Executive Board, announcing plans to institute procedures for increased transparency in its MOW review process. It also postponed registration of the comfort women-related materials. Having more or less achieved its aim, Japan decided to submit its funding share payment late last year.

UNESCO does not plan to accept MOW registration applications until the system changes have been introduced.

By Cho Ki-weo, Tokyo correspondents