SEOUL \u2013 South Korea will not send officials to Saturday\u2019s memorial service at the Sado Island Gold Mines, a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site in Niigata Prefecture, it was learned Wednesday.<\/p>\n
It will be the third consecutive year of South Korea\u2019s absence from the memorial service, which honors workers at the now-defunct mines.<\/p>\n
According to a South Korean government source, Seoul held serious consultations with the Japanese side but could not reach an agreement on key disputed points.<\/p>\n
The two sides are believed to remain at odds over whether laborers from the Korean Peninsula were forced to work at the mines.<\/p>\n
The South Korean government is expected to hold a separate memorial ceremony this year as well.<\/p>\n
In 2024, the Sado gold mines were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list after Japan gained the consent of South Korea, which had claimed that the mines were a site of forced labor, by promising to hold an annual memorial ceremony for all workers at the mines.<\/p>\n
This July, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee adopted a resolution calling for improvements to the site\u2019s exhibits to provide a comprehensive view of the history of mining on the island.<\/p>\n
The South Korean government source urged Japan to comply with the resolution fully and in good faith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL \u2013 South Korea will not send officials to Saturday\u2019s memorial service at the Sado Island Gold Mines,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3151,31,24193,75291,33,6581,75290],"class_list":["post-148651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-south-korea","tag-history","tag-korea","tag-niigata","tag-sado-island","tag-south-korea","tag-south-korea-japan-relations","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}