hankyoreh

Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi of Japan delivers a speech in this undated photo. (Yonhap)

After Japan asked UNESCO to register the Sado gold mine complex — where Koreans worked as conscript laborers — as a World Heritage site, its foreign minister used an annual speech to claim once again that the island of Dokdo belongs to Japan. As baggage between the two countries piles up, their governments are speeding up negotiations on the issue of Koreans forced to perform hard labor during the Japanese colonial period.

“Takeshima” — the Japanese name for the Dokdo islets — “is an inherent part of the territory of Japan both in light of historical facts and based on international law,” said Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi during a foreign policy speech at the regular session of the Japanese Diet, which began on Monday.

Japan’s top diplomats have been repeating that claim for the past 10 years, ever since Fumio Kishida (then foreign minister and now prime minister) did so during his foreign policy speech in 2014.

South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded that same afternoon with a statement in which spokesperson Lim Soo-suk called on Japan to immediately retract Hayashi’s remarks. “The Japanese government needs to realize that repeating unfair claims about Dokdo is completely unhelpful for building a future-oriented relationship between our two countries,” Lim said.

Japan is also pushing to have the Sado gold mine complex added to the UNESCO World Heritage list. Hayashi promised that the ministry would “play a steadfast role” in regard to gaining the status for the Sado mines, in Niigata Prefecture, where Koreans were conscripted for hard labor during the Japanese colonial period.

On Thursday, the Japanese government submitted an official recommendation to the UNESCO World Heritage secretariat, in Paris, about registering the Sado mine as a heritage site next year, and now the Foreign Ministry has reconfirmed that it will see the job done.

February will see the first of several scheduled events that are likely to irritate the Korean public. There are the festivities for Japan’s Takeshima Day on Feb. 22, the results of the textbook review by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in March, the spring rites at the Yasukuni Shrine in April and the release of contaminated water at the Fukushima nuclear reactor in the first half of the year.

Despite these negative factors, Seoul and Tokyo are accelerating negotiations aimed at resolving the forced labor issue.

Following a meeting in Tokyo on Jan. 16 between Seo Min-jung, director-general for Asian and Pacific Affairs of Korea’s Foreign Ministry, and Takehiro Funakoshi, director-general for Asian and Oceanian Affairs at Japan’s Foreign Ministry, the two countries are setting up another meeting between bureau chiefs in Seoul at the end of January.

Considering that bureau chiefs typically meet once a month, increasing the frequency of their talks means that the two countries are accelerating last-minute work on resolving the forced labor issue. The Korean government is promoting a plan for third-party compensation by the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization by Imperial Japan, rather than offending Japanese companies, despite opposition from the victims.

Korea’s presidential office is planning to wrap up the forced labor issue as early as next month and push for the normalization of Korea-Japan relations and the restoration of “shuttle diplomacy” between the two leaders.

A high-ranking official at the presidential office told the Hankyoreh that when it comes to resolving historical disputes, “the sooner the better.”

“The tide is coming in, and we’re getting ready to work the oars. We’re holding brisk meetings at the working level to coordinate pressing issues,” the official said.

Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s visit to Japan could come as early as February, but probably no later than May. The Japanese government is reportedly weighing the option of inviting Yoon to the Group of Seven summit that will be held in Hiroshima in May.

“Since the designation of the Sado gold mine as a UNESCO world heritage site and the history textbook announcement are known issues, I think [the government] will adjust the timing of the forced labor negotiations and the intensity of its criticism about these issues in line with Korean public opinion,” said Kim Joon-hyung, the former chancellor of the Korean National Diplomatic Academy, in a phone call with the Hankyoreh.

By Shin Hyeong-cheol, staff reporter; Kim Mi-na, staff reporter

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