Japan's Sado mines added to World Heritage list

South Korea's foreign ministry said it had agreed to the listing "on the condition that Japan faithfully implements the recommendation... to reflect the 'full history' at the Sado Gold Mine site and takes proactive measures to that end."

Will Japan actually do that?

Even in official information from that gold mine site, Japan won't admit about forced labor that being used to work in that mine. No mention about harsh condition that those forced laborers need to face.

When not straight words, they use words such as "obliged workers".

https://news.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20240727050091

https://apjjf.org/2022/5/johnsen

Meh. I do want to visit Sado but not because of any World Heritage Site designation. When I think of World Heritage I think of the Taj Mahal or Grand Canyon not a hole in the ground.

When will this madness stop?

When will this madness stop?

Being awarded World Heritage status is "madness"?

Strange take.

The Sado mines were created 400 years ago. The mine itself is hardly "infamous" since Korean workers were there only a few years relatively. But if Japan is agreeable to mentioning it by all means. Meantime Japan has way too many Word Heritage sites, and frankly I cant see myself visiting an old mine just because of it.

because of their lengthy history and the artisanal mining techniques used there at a time when European mines had turned to mechanisation.

There won't be very much "artisanal" about making a hole in the ground. This is not temple carpentry or even stone quarrying. If it was still being done by hand, this was because of low labour cost and/or ignorance of machinery used overseas. There is no intrinsic value is pulling something to be melted down out of the ground by hand.

Koreans will continue to make a fuss unless they stop their fantasy view that Koreans were taken to Japan against their will and forced to work there before World War II. Koreans are the only ones who cite Wikipedia and movies as historical evidence.

Chinese people who were really forced to work as prisoners of war on Gunkanjima were individually compensated after the war. Koreans were not included because they were not brought there by force.

Only foolish Koreans make fun of Japan's use of fax machines, but in reality fax machines are used more in America and Europe than in Japan.

@wandora

Being awarded World Heritage status is "madness"? 

Strange take.

No. Read the above comments. Then you'll understand.

I certainly don’t think that everything Japan does is super but I have to agree that your “madness” remark is either a “strange take”, jealousy, or that you think “everything Japan does is terrible” if you’re alluding to the number of world heritage sites in Japan. You do realize that the number of world heritage sites in Japan doesn’t even put Japan in the top 10 by number when compared to all other countries.

If you comment is the world heritage sites around the world are becoming a dime a dozen and is actually detracting from the value of the title then I agree, the world heritage foundation seems to have gone mad in designating everything as a world heritage site. There are now far too many around the world in my opinion.

In the first place, why should we have to deal with Koreans who make unsubstantiated claims based only on the testimony of self-proclaimed victims?

If there is evidence, it is natural that the self-proclaimed victims should present evidence in developed countries lol

If a trial were held and an unsubstantiated case was fabricated, it would be the self-proclaimed victims who would have to prove it.

At that time, coal mining work was hard and dangerous, but the pay was good, so many coal miners wanted the high pay. At the time, the starting salary for police officers was 45 yen per month, and the starting salary for clerical graduates was 75 yen, but coal miners' monthly pay, including wages and allowances, was 150 to 180 yen.

The Korean Peninsula was in a bad economic situation at the time, so there were many stowaways to Japan even before Japan annexed it, and many Koreans wanted to work in high-paying jobs like Gunkanjima.

In "The Truth and Glory of the Coal Mines: The Fiction of Korean Forced Labor," the author, Junsuke Fukamachi, records his experience working at the Mitsubishi Takashima Coal Mine on Gunkanjima.

During the war, Gunkanjima had three brothels, one of which was exclusively for Koreans (Gunkanjima is in the process of being branded as the "Island of Hell"). If Koreans were used like slaves, there would have been no brothel exclusively for Koreans in the first place. I have never heard of a brothel exclusively for slaves.

People who worked on Gunkanjima are still alive, and their situation is different from that of the military prostitutes who began claiming in the 1990s that they had been abducted by the Japanese military.

I have been there. Intriguing.

SeapigJuly 27  07:36 pm JST

I certainly don’t think that everything Japan does is super but I have to agree that your “madness” remark is either a “strange take”, jealousy, or that you think “everything Japan does is terrible” if you’re alluding to the number of world heritage sites in Japan. You do realize that the number of world heritage sites in Japan doesn’t even put Japan in the top 10 by number when compared to all other countries.

If you comment is the world heritage sites around the world are becoming a dime a dozen and is actually detracting from the value of the title then I agree, the world heritage foundation seems to have gone mad in designating everything as a world heritage site. There are now far too many around the world in my opinion.

The top 3 countries, Italy has 58, Russia will have 58 when it's remaining is approved, China has 56. But you single out Japan for criticism. Why? Why do you not criticize those other nations? Some of them have war memorials built in the modern era that are on the list and which have nothing to do with World Heritage. Another has their government offices on the listing, which again has nothing to do with World Heritage.

I'll agree that perhaps the World Heritage Centre designation of questionable sites has led to them becoming "a dime a dozen" as you stated, and I'll go further and state that some of the sites are even a mockery of World Heritage. But those are not being criticized, why only Japan's?

@sakurasuki

Will Japan actually do that?

Yes, Japan agreed to the specific location and the text of forced labor history to be displayed at Sado mine.

@Agent_Neo

In the first place, why should we have to deal with Koreans who make unsubstantiated claims based only on the testimony of self-proclaimed victims?

It's because of the Japan proposed rule at UNESCO.

Japan introduced a rule where historically contentious listings must be agreed by all parties, to block the UNESCO listing of the Imperial Japanese Army documents left behind in China that prove the Imperial Japanese Army high command was involved in the forced conscription of comfort women at gunpoint.

Are Koreans a people who mistakenly believe that they can prove any crime with just a testimony?

If the testimony cannot be supported by evidence, it cannot be used as evidence.

In the first place, Japan's objections were related to "memory heritage" such as the Nanjing Massacre and the military prostitute fabrication case. It is better to understand that this is different from "cultural heritage."

Sado Island was also registered as it was because Korea could not provide evidence.

As I recall, the evidence used by the Koreans is a list of cigarette purchasers, correct?　You are sure it is a list of cigarette buyers, right?

https://japanese.joins.com/JArticle/299697?sectcode=A10&servcode=A00

I do not understand the situation where someone who could afford to buy cigarettes would sue for forced labor. I also don't quite understand how the person who forced the worker to work was selling cigarettes to that worker. Would that ever happen?