legrandangle-lgm

SADO, Japan (AP) — Japanese officials paid tribute to the country’s workers on Sunday Gold mines on Sado Island but made no apology for Japan’s brutal wartime use Korean forced laborershighlighting ongoing tensions between neighbors over the issue.

South Korea announced this was the case a day earlier boycott the memorialsaying it was impossible to resolve unspecified differences between the two governments in time for the event. The Korean absence is a major setback in rapidly improving ties between the two countries, which have put aside their historic differences since last year to prioritize US-led security cooperation.

The Sado mines were listed in July as one UNESCO World Heritage Site after Japan left years of disputes with South Korea behind it and reluctantly acknowledged the mines’ dark history, promising to hold an annual memorial service for all victims, including hundreds of Koreans mobilized to work in the mines work.

The first ceremony of what Japan has promised will be an annual event, held at a facility near the mines, took place with more than 20 empty chairs for South Korean attendees.

“As a local resident, I must say that (their absence) is very disappointing after all the preparations we have made,” Sado Mayor Ryugo Watanabe said. “I wish we could have had the commemoration with South Korean attendees.”

Families of Korean mine accident victims and South Korean officials are expected to hold their own ceremony near the mine on Monday to express their “firm resolve not to compromise with Japan on historical issues,” the South Korean ministry said of Foreign Affairs in a statement. statement. It said South Korea will continue to strive to improve bilateral ties in a manner that serves the national interests of both countries.

At the ceremony on Sunday, four Japanese representatives, including central and local government officials and the head of the organizing group, thanked all the miners for their sacrifice and mourned the dead. No one apologized to the Korean forced laborers for the harsh treatment in the mines.

Akiko Ikuina, a parliamentary vice minister representing the Japanese government, praised the workers’ craftsmanship and their contribution to the Sado mines.

She noted that “many people from the Korean Peninsula were in the mines under Japan’s wartime labor policy” and that they performed hard work in dangerous and harsh conditions, away from home and their loved ones, and that some died from accidents or from diseases . she did not recognize their forced labor or the Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

There is speculation that the South Korean boycott could be a result of Ikuina’s previous visit to the controversial district of Tokyo. Yasukuni Shrine – in August 2022, weeks after she was elected MP. Japan’s neighbors view Yasukuni, which commemorates 2.5 million war dead, including war criminals, as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism.

Ikuina belonged to a Japanese ruling party faction of the former prime minister Shinzo Abewho presided over the whitewashing of Japan’s war atrocities during his leadership in the 2010s.

Japan, for example, says the terms “sex slavery” and “forced labor” are inaccurate and insists on using highly euphemistic terms like “comfort women” and “civilian laborers.”

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul said on Saturday that Ikuina’s visit to Yasukuni was a bone of contention between the countries’ diplomats.

The 16th-century mines on Sado Island, off Japan’s north-central coast, operated for almost 400 years before closing in 1989 and were once the world’s largest gold producer.

Historians say that about 1,500 Koreans were mobilized to Sado as part of Japan’s deployment of hundreds of thousands of Korean workers, including those forcibly transferred from the Korean Peninsula to Japanese mines and factories, to fill the labor shortage as most Japanese working-age men sent to battle fronts in Asia and the Pacific.

The Japanese government has maintained that all wartime compensation issues between the two countries had been resolved under a 1965 normalization treaty.

South Korea had long resisted the site’s inclusion as a World Heritage Site because Korean forced laborers, despite their key role in wartime mine production, were missing from the exhibition. Seoul’s support for Sado came as South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol priority given to improving relations with Japan.

Some South Koreans had criticized Yoon’s government for supporting the event without securing a clear Japanese commitment to highlight the plight of Korean workers. There were also complaints about South Korea agreeing to pay the travel expenses of Korean victims’ relatives to Sado.

___

Kim reported from Seoul, South Korea. Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

Story continues