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A tunnel in the Aikawa mine, the largest of the gold and silver mines on Sado Island, constructed after the Meiji era. (Yonhap)

Following the South Korean government’s decision not to make public Japan’s dismissal of demands to include information about the forcible mobilization of Korean workers during the two sides’ negotiations over the listing of the Sado mine complex as a UNESCO World Heritage site, it is looking increasingly likely that Seoul approached the negotiations having decided ahead of time that it was always going to agree to the site’s registration.

In a written response provided on Tuesday to Democratic Party lawmaker and National Assembly Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee member Lee Jae-jung, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “While [the South Korean side] asked Japan to include Japanese historical records and an exhibition draft text including the term ‘forcible’ during discussions on the exhibition content, Japan ultimately did not agree to this.”

The “Japanese historical records” mentioned in the ministry’s response appeared to be a reference to a 1988 book published by Niigata Prefecture — the location of the Sado mines — under the title “A Complete History of Niigata Prefecture, Volume 8: The Modern Era, Part 3.” Specifically, it concerned a passage reading, “The labor mobilization plan begun in 1939 went under different names, including ‘open recruitment,’ ‘official placement,’ and ‘requisition,’ but the fact remained that it involved the forcible mobilization of Koreans.”

Indeed, the mention of the “forced mobilization of Koreans” in a Japanese historical text was reported on several times in the local press. Yet the Korean side agreed to the site’s listing even after Japan refused to include this material in its display. This explains why people are describing the decision as a “humiliation.”

In reality, the outcome of the negotiations — Korea agreeing to the site’s registration — was decided early on based on the position of President Yoon Suk-yeol and his presidential office, who have regarded improved relations with Tokyo and trilateral military cooperation with the US and Japan as their top foreign affairs and national security achievements.

The Japanese government, for its part, saw that there was no way this Korean administration would say no to listing the Sado mines. Accordingly, it had no reason to make concessions on the key issue — referring to “forcible mobilization.” The Korean negotiation team effectively had its hands tied.

The tragedy here is that Korea allowed itself to be dragged around by Japan, and acceded to its refusal to include language about forcible mobilization, even when the situation was already favorable for the Korean side, with the International Council on Monuments and Sites — a UNESCO advisory body — having issued a recommendation in June to defer the site’s listing.

Japan has insisted that because the Korean workers were conscripted in accordance with a general national mobilization order under colonial rule, their labor was neither forcible nor illegal.

That attitude is rooted in the far-right historical attitudes that have gained prevalence in Japan since the Shinzo Abe cabinet, which maintained that Japan’s colonial rule of Korea was lawful. It’s a sensitive issue that gets to the very core of bilateral relations.

In its response to Lee Jae-jung, the Foreign Ministry stressed that negotiations were approached “under the understanding that it would be domestically unacceptable for the draft to represent a step backward from 2015.”

The ministry’s official position is that the latest negotiations upheld the open acknowledgment made by Japan in 2015 when it was registering Hashima Island (Gunkanjima, or “Battleship Island”) on the World Heritage list. At the time, it recognized that “a large number of Koreans and others who were brought against their will and forced to work.”

But Yoon Suk-yeol has never clearly stated Korea’s position that Japan’s colonial rule and forced mobilization were unlawful. After the listing of the Sado mines, Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Tae-yul merely urged Japan to “show sincere efforts to implement follow-up measures such as commemoration ceremonies.”

From its “third-party compensation” solution to its consent to the Sado mines’ World Heritage listing, the Yoon administration has repeatedly let Japan off the hook for its responsibility for forced labor mobilization.

By Park Min-hee, senior staff writer

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