UNESCO-JAPAN UNESCO approves world heritage status for Japanese industrial sites

Record ID: 148450

  • Title: UNESCO-JAPAN UNESCO approves world heritage status for Japanese industrial sites
  • Date: 6th July 2015
  • Summary: BONN, GERMANY (JULY 5, 2015) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF VENUE OF CONFERENCE, OLD GERMAN PARLIAMENT BUILDING ASSEMBLY HALL SLIDE OF HERITAGE SITES VARIOUS OF ASSEMBLY SLIDE OF HERITAGE SITES JAPANESE DELEGATION (SOUNDBITE) (German) CHAIRPERSON OF WORLD HERITAGE COMMITTEE AND JUNIOR MINISTER, GERMAN FOREIGN MINISTRY, MARIA BOEHMER, SAYING: "We are now at the moment when I can dec
  • Embargoed: 21st July 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Germany
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA8YHM1ZVHEE6IT9T41MATHMRLM
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The UNESCO World Heritage Committee on Sunday (July 5) decided to add the 23 sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution to the World Heritage list.
    The decision was made at a meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Bonn, Germany, on Sunday. The sites, spread over eight prefectures, represent Japan's rapid industrialisation from the late 19th Century to the early 20th Century.
    The sites played a pivotal role in Japan's rapid industrialisation and adaptation of Western technologies, according to Tokyo's Cultural Affairs Agency, but the decision has driven strong opposition from Seoul as seven facilities where hundreds of thousands of Koreans were forced into slave labour under Japanese colonial rule are included in the list. The Korean Peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule between 1910 and 1945.
    The UNESCO committee was scheduled to make the decision on Saturday (July 4), but postponed it to Sunday due to last-minute coordination between Japan and South Korea.
    Japan said that it will acknowledge the fact and its historical responsibilities.
    "More specifically, Japan is prepared 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. And that during World War II, the government of Japan also implemented its policy of requisition," said Japan's ambassador to UNESCO, Kuni Sato.
    She said that Japan will also establish an information centre to "remember the victims".
    "There is no change whatsoever to the position that the issues relating to property and claims between Japan and the Republic of Korea including the issue of requisition workers from the Korean peninsula, which has been settled completely and finally by the claims settlement and economic cooperation agreement of 1965, which was concluded on the occasion of the normalization of the relationship between Japan and Korea," Hiroto Izumi, special advisor to the Prime Minister of Japan, told a press conference.
    The deputy foreign minister of South Korea, Cho Tae Yeol, said that Korea is prepared to accept the decision of UNESCO.
    "The government of the Republic of Korea has decided to join the committee's consensus decision on this matter, as it has full confidence in the authority of the committee, and trust them. The government of Japan will be implementing good faith in the measure that have been announced before this body today," Cho said.
    Among the sites are a shipyard in Nagasaki, a defunct coal mine in Hashima, a steel mill in Fukuoka and other facilities that are still in use.
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