UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, meeting in New Delhi, India, has decided to list a complex of primarily gold mines on Sado Island in the Sea of Japan as a World Cultural Heritage site.
It will be the 26th world heritage site in Japan.
The committee started discussing the listing of the mines on Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture, which Japan had recommended to UNESCO, around 10 a.m. on Saturday local time. The committee then unanimously voted in favor of the listing.
South Korea had opposed registering the mines on grounds that people from the Korean Peninsula were forced to work there. But Seoul agreed to the listing following dialogue with Tokyo.
A representative from the Japanese government says it will faithfully remember all the people who worked at the mines, especially those from the Korean Peninsula, and will continue to work closely with South Korea to beef up a strategy to comprehensively explain and display the history of the mines at the exhibition facility.
A delegation from Niigata Prefecture, led by Gov. Hanazumi Hideyo, watched the committee’s proceedings and celebrated the decision to list the Sado mines.