UNESCO is failing victims of Japan’s historical colonial exploitation

On November 24, 2024, Japan held a memorial service at its UNESCO site, the Sado Gold Mines, in Niigata to commemorate labourers who worked in it. South Korean officials who were invited boycotted the event. Instead, on the following day, they held their own ceremony remembering Koreans who worked the mines as forced labourers under Japanese colonial rule.

The Sado Gold Mines, which were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on July 27, have become yet another battleground over the history of Japanese colonial exploitation of Koreans and efforts to whitewash it. Japan has long resisted recognising the wartime discrimination and forced labour endured by Koreans and other foreign workers, including at industrial sites listed as World Heritage in 2015 under the title “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution”.

In both instances, Japan has argued that wartime history is irrelevant to the heritage value of these sites. Though it promised UNESCO to tell the “full history”, the version Japan presents is distorted by colonial apologetics, refusing to recognise Koreans workers mobilised during the war as victims of foreign forced labour.

What’s particularly troubling is the tolerance of this revisionism by both UNESCO and the current South Korean government, which seem willing to overlook the erasure of Korean victims for the sake of fostering better diplomatic relations.

When Japan’s Meiji industrial sites were inscribed in 2015, the country?initially agreed?to present the history of “a large number of Koreans and others” who were “brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions”.

But shortly after, then-Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida downplayed the concession, stating that “forced to work” did not mean “forced labour”. The argument hinged on the legal fiction that Koreans, as subjects of the Japanese Empire, could be legally conscripted for wartime labour under certain conditions.

Since the opening of an?information centre?in Tokyo in 2020, meant to educate the public on this history, Japan has instead promoted a whitewashed narrative. It claims that Korean and Japanese labourers worked together in harmony, but pointedly avoids the term “Koreans”,?while systematically referring to Koreans as “workers from the Korean Peninsula”.

This subtle erasure denies Korean nationality and echoes the colonial term “hantoujin” (peninsula people), which was used to strip Koreans of their identity during colonial rule. At that time, Koreans as colonial subjects did not have the full rights of Japanese citizens – another fact that is glossed over.

The centre also omits critical documents, such as testimonies from Korean labourers and Japanese supervisors, which document how Koreans were subjected to discrimination, physical punishment, forced contract extensions, and dangerous work conditions.

Japan’s approach to the Sado Gold Mines, where at least 1,519 Koreans worked as forced labourers under inhumane conditions during World War II, follows a similar path. In its?supplementary information?to UNESCO, Japan consistently refers to “workers from the Korean Peninsula” without acknowledging the forced nature of their labour. It even suggests the work environment was “non-discriminatory”, blatantly ignoring historical evidence.

During the World Heritage inscription ceremony, a Japanese representative announced that an exhibition encompassing Korean labourers had been put in place and that annual memorials for “all workers” at the mines would be implemented. South Korea’s representative optimistically claimed this would help alleviate concerns about Japan’s failure to address Korean experiences at the industrial sites inscribed in 2015.

However,?the exhibition – entitled “The Life of Mine Workers Including Those from the Korean Peninsula” – fails to acknowledge the forced and inhumane conditions Korean labourers faced. By grouping their experiences with Japanese workers, Japan effectively denies the conditions of foreign forced labour and the documented experiences of victims. Similarly, the memorial held on November 24 failed to acknowledge Korean forced labour.

Rather than offering a moment of recognition, the memorial service risks further entrenching a revisionist narrative that suggests all workers at the mines faced similar hardships in support of Japan’s war effort. This kind of misrepresentation is more harmful than neglecting to hold a memorial at all. It denies the voices of victims and undermines the ongoing struggle for historical recognition.

Japan’s persistent denial of wartime forced labour has long been a barrier to improving relations with South Korea. Yet, the current South Korean government has demonstrated that prioritising diplomatic relations takes precedence over addressing historical wrongs and colonial trauma. In a bid to sell the Sado inscription as a diplomatic win, South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs even altered the words “all workers” to “Korean workers” in a summary of the official Japanese statement at UNESCO released to the Korean public.

This short-sighted approach risks further undermining South Korea-Japan relations in the long run. Public support for the current South Korean government is?extraordinarily low?and the next government may have to undo much of this work to regain public trust.

As global discussions increasingly focus on decolonisation and inclusive narratives, it is alarming to?see UNESCO tolerate Japan’s neglect of Korean victims’ voices. While it issued a statement in 2021 urging Japan to honour its commitment to recognise the history of Korean and other forced labour at the Meiji industrial sites, it has yet to indicate any intention of revoking the sites’ World Heritage status for non-compliance.

Despite this unresolved issue, UNESCO inscribed the Sado Gold Mines, thus undermining its own credibility and reinforcing historical revisionism. It should have withheld the Sado Gold Mines’ inscription until Japan corrected the historical erasure at previously designated sites.

All of these developments highlight the importance of understanding East Asia’s modern history on the world stage. If we are serious about decolonisation, we must approach these histories with a broader, transregional perspective, recognising patterns of colonial legacies beyond the Euro-American context.

By raising awareness of different forms of imperialism and their enduring effect, we can empower people worldwide to better recognise and challenge the colonial crimes and exploitation that are unfolding in front of us in other parts of the world today.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.