Japan responds to South Korea's request that warship island be removed from the world
Overseas Network, June 22 (South Korea) The Korean government had previously requested that Japan’s warship island be removed from the World Heritage List as the “Inheritance of the Industrial Revolution in the Meiji Era”. Japanese Cabinet Chief Sugai Suga responded to this at a press conference on the 22nd, saying that this is not a problem that Japan should deal with.
According to Japan’s “Yomiuri Shimbun” report on the 22nd, Suga Yoshiki said at a press conference: “We have always sincerely accepted and honestly implemented the World Heritage Committee’s previous resolutions and advisories, and will continue to respond accordingly.” For the Korean government Previously claiming to send a letter to UNESCO requesting cancellation, Sugi said that he has not received relevant notices at present.
In 2015, the warship island was included in the World Heritage List as part of Japan's "Meiji Industrial Revolution Heritage". At that time, the World Heritage Committee proposed a condition that Japan must "completely tell the relevant history," and the Japanese side also made a commitment.
Warship Island, formerly known as "Hashima", is located in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. It is one of the 505 uninhabited islands in the surrounding waters. It was built from the end of the curtain to the Meiji period and belongs to the Meiji industrial revolution site. According to legend, at the end of World War II, the island was named by the US military as a warship. The most famous landscape on the island is the abandoned concrete building, which is also the earliest reinforced concrete high-rise building in Japan.
At first, the warship island was only a small shoal and reef, and the area was only one-third of its current size. After about six times of reclamation and construction of the seawall and construction of the breakwater around 1931, Mitsubishi mainly conducted coal mining operations here. During the heyday of the coal mining industry, the island had a maximum number of more than 5,200 people; in addition to the Japanese, it included Chinese and Korean workers who were forced to be here during World War II. In 2017, the New York Times Square exhibited a video titled "The Truth of Warship Island", which revealed the dark history of Japan's forced recruitment and abuse of Chinese, Korean and Korean workers on the warship island during World War II. . The video producer said that the warship island is actually "Hell Island". The island was registered as a World Heritage Site in 2015.
The South Korean government said it would send a letter to UNESCO requesting that the Japanese warship island be removed from the world heritage. The South Korean side believes that Japan’s display of the Industrial Revolution site in Tokyo on the 15th completely distorted historical facts and failed to make public the fact that Japan had forced labor, and South Korea criticized Japan for failing to comply. On the 15th, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of South Korea summoned the Japanese ambassador to South Korea and strongly protested that Japan exhibited an exhibition content that distorted the history of the labor force. (Overseas Wang Shanning)