YPS - Review

Why Sado Island should not be one of the UNESCO Heritage

Taeyeon Kim 

November 8th, 2024

On July 27th, 2024, Sado Island in Japan was recently inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List by consensus of all Member States of the World Heritage Committee at the 46th Session of the World Heritage Committee. The rising problem regarding this new inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage is that Sado Island was a land where forced labor of at least 1,141 Joseon people took place and that the Japanese government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are ignoring this historical fact by not mentioning any sources about the forced labor toward Joseon people in their memorial and cunningly setting the inscription timeline to the Edo period(1603~1868) where does not include the incident of the forced labor that occurred from 1939 to 1945. South Korea approved the inscription of the Sado Island, but it was only under the two promises that the Japanese government had made: that they would make a memorial that shows their wartime labor exploitation, but it is still apparent that these museums do not consent to forced labor. Arguably, the approval for Sado Island as a UNESCO heritage underestimates the severity of the wartime atrocities and approves Japan’s concealment of its notorious history during World War II, which finally insists on the exclusion of Sado Island from the UNESCO heritage list.

After Mitsubishi Materials took over the Sado mines from the Japanese government in 1896, Japan exchanged the gold from the Sado mines for Western weapons and warships, which led to its victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Furthermore, in the same year, the Japanese government achieved a protectorate of Korea, and then 5 years later in 1910, they finally started the colonization in Korea. During this period, Japan dominated the leadership of influence in the East Asian region, and to strengthen its power Mitsubishi planned to increase its production which became reliant on forced labor from Koreans. Furthermore, the Japanese government passed the National General Labor Mobilization Law in 1938, enabling Mitsubishi to collect forced laborers from Korea more easily. The estimated number of Korean forced laborers in Sado mines ranged from 1,200 to 1,500. Most of the Korean miners on the island had fallen sick from deleterious working conditions, while Japanese men were brought out for wartime conscription. Furthermore, the method that Japan used to round up the forced laborers often entailed outright kidnapping and human trafficking, and this was actively proceeded by the Government-General of Chosun, Japan’s colonial headquarters for Korea. The conscripted laborers were relocated with their families and Mitsubishi slashed their pay to discourage escapes. Moreover, the tasks Koreans had to do were the most precarious, and they needed to go deep inside the mine shafts. The laborers could barely withstand three years on the island’s harsh working conditions due to lung diseases and accidents.

The reason for this brutal island should not be a UNESCO Heritage is quite apparent. First of all, selecting a direct place where labor exploitation had occurred does not fit the UN’s spirit of promoting global peace and it is a serious ethical dilemma to approve the history of forced labor as a valuable heritage. Moreover, besides selecting it as a heritage, the Japanese government is neglecting and distorting such barbarous history and consistently refuses to acknowledge the disgrace of their past. A small gallery opened in Japan to accept Korean requests hardly provides an understanding of Korean forced laborers and does not even mention the word “forced labor”, instead uses such words as “recruitment” and “requisition”. This attitude is a vital mutilation to Korean history and the forced laborers and is morally unacceptable. Meanwhile, from a Korean diplomatic perspective, it is a dishonor to repeat the diplomatic damage from the Battleship Island incident in 2017, and the most critical part is that South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol is engaging to Japanese Kishida administration for the Sado Island’s historical distortion. The moral destiny of this island would be decided by recognizing history and well dealing with the follow-up response to the past mistake, and therefore, the withdrawal of Sado Island from the UNESCO Heritage list would be a step for the diplomatic recovery for both nations.