The oldest mines on Sado Island, off Japan's northwest coast, are said to have started working as early as the 12th century, and the site remained in operation until after World War II.

Japan believes it deserves to join the UNESCO World Heritage List, due to its long history and remarkable legacy from pre-industrial times.

This year, Tokyo submitted an application for three gold and silver mining sites in Sado from the Edo period (1603-1867), a period when these mines would have been the most productive in the world and when the work was done by hand.

But what the Japanese file does not say and which makes Seoul wince is that the Sado mines used about 1,500 Korean workers during the Second World War.

The precise status these workers had is disputed, with some claiming that a majority of them signed contracts on a voluntary basis.

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"The working conditions were extremely harsh, nevertheless the pay was very high, which is why many people, including many Japanese, sought to be recruited", according to Koichiro Matsuura, former director general of Unesco who supports the candidacy of the mines of Sado.

"The discrimination existed"

But others claim that the conditions of recruitment amounted to forced labor, and that Korean workers were treated less well than Japanese miners.

"The discrimination existed," said Toyomi Asano, a professor of Japanese political history at Waseda University in Tokyo.

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The working conditions of the Koreans "were very bad" and "the most dangerous tasks were entrusted to them", adds this researcher.

Various historical disputes dating back to the colonization of the Korean peninsula by Japan (1910-1945) have poisoned relations for years between Tokyo and Seoul, which created a working group aimed at defeating the listing of the Sado mines on the Unesco.

Similar quarrels between the two neighboring countries already exist concerning sites of the Japanese industrial revolution of the Meiji era (1868-1912) registered as World Heritage since 2015.

Last year, Unesco called on Japan to take steps to make visitors aware that a "large number of Koreans and other people were brought in against their will and forced to work in harsh conditions" on these sites.

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Japan "must avoid making the same mistake again" in Sado, admits Mr. Matsuura.

“We need to say in a more concrete and more honest way how the Korean workers lived and worked” in these mines.

Avoid selective memory

The places began to welcome tourists in the 1960s, when their mining activity was running out of steam.

Antiquated and somewhat sinister reconstructions are still in place, with stiff automatons with swiveling heads and mechanical arms kicking ax.

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Hideji Yamagami, a 79-year-old Japanese visitor, believes that the existence of Korean forced laborers should be mentioned there: "I had no idea about it. I thought it was Japanese people who did all this hard work," says- he told AFP.

Explanatory panels on site barely mention it, while dwelling on other dark sides of the site in the Edo period, where miners were often forcibly conscripted homeless poor and child labor also sometimes exist.

Professor Toyomi Asano hopes that Unesco will insist that the whole history of the Sado mines be presented on site, and not a selective memory, if the site ever joins the World Heritage list.

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Japan "must not be afraid" to recognize a part of its history, believes Mr. Asano.

"Every nation has dark sides in its history. Those that don't have them don't exist."

© 2022 AFP