South Korea’s Bid to Address Japan’s Colonial Past Falls Short at UNESCO

South Korea has failed to place Japan’s failure to address colonial-era forced labor at UNESCO-listed Meiji Industrial Revolution sites on UNESCO’s official discussion agenda.

The outcome followed intense negotiations with Tokyo and behind-the-scenes efforts to rally international support, particularly from the 21-member World Heritage Committee under UNESCO.

South Korea initially proposed discussing the issue during the 47th session of the World Heritage Committee held on Monday in Paris. Japan later submitted an amendment to exclude the issue from discussion, which was eventually put to a vote.

Of the 21 committee members, eight cast blank ballots, three submitted invalid ballots, seven voted in favor of Japan’s amendment to exclude the issue from discussion, and three voted against it.

With a simple majority of six required, Japan’s proposed amendment was adopted.

The vote came after Seoul and Tokyo failed to reconcile their differences over whether Japan’s neglect of its 2015 public commitment to address the history of forced mobilization of Koreans at UNESCO-inscribed sites should be included as an official agenda item at this year’s session.

“We regret that the necessary votes for the adoption of the agenda were ultimately not secured,” the Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the vote.

This UNESCO vote marked the first time the longstanding dispute between Seoul and Tokyo over historical issues stemming from Japan’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945 was put to a vote at the committee.

During Monday’s session, the South Korean government delegation reiterated its position that Japan’s failure to fulfill the commitments it made in 2015 — when 23 sites from Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution were added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List — should be discussed within UNESCO.

Among the 23 sites, Koreans were forcibly mobilized at seven — including the coal mines on Japan’s Hashima Island, also known as Battleship Island.

Japan maintained its stance that the issue should be addressed bilaterally between Seoul and Tokyo, not on the UNESCO platform.

In 2015, Japan pledged to “take measures that allow an understanding that there were a large number of Koreans and others who were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites.”

Japan also promised to “incorporate appropriate measures into the interpretive strategy to remember the victims, such as the establishment of an information center.”

How the vote unfolded
South Korea faced additional challenges in raising the issue as an official agenda item at this year’s meeting because Japan’s adherence to its UNESCO pledge was not automatically included on the World Heritage Committee’s official agenda.

The 2023 resolution was adopted at a time when South Korea was not among the 21 members of the World Heritage Committee, but Japan was.

In contrast, previous resolutions on the same matter adopted in 2015, 2018, and 2021 formally requested Japan to submit SOC reports. Consequently, Japan’s failure to uphold its pledge was discussed as an official agenda item.

Japan used the 2023 resolution technicality to argue that the issue should not be included as an official agenda item at this year’s session — a position South Korea firmly rejected.

“The South Korean government finds Japan’s argument completely unconvincing,” a Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. “While it’s true that the 2023 resolution doesn’t state that Japan’s update is subject to review by the World Heritage Committee, there’s also no rule prohibiting its discussion at the committee.”

From Seoul’s perspective, a fundamental principle of the World Heritage Committee is that any issue should be brought to the table if a member state believes there’s a problem with the implementation of a decision concerning a specific heritage site.

“Therefore, we requested that this matter be added to the provisional agenda so that it could be discussed by the committee,” the official explained.

The official added, “After months of back-and-forth, the UNESCO Secretariat ultimately agreed and circulated the document listing the item as part of the provisional agenda to member states on June 12.”

Typically, provisional agenda items are adopted through consensus at World Heritage Committee sessions. However, in this case, Japan proposed an amendment to exclude South Korea’s proposed provisional agenda during the session, effectively nullifying South Korea’s original proposal.