hankyoreh

Within the Sado mine complex are still traces of where Korean forced laborers went about their lives there some 80 or so years ago. This structure, in a clearing behind the mine, was where Korean laborers ate their meals each day. No signage denoting this history can be found. (Kim So-youn/Hankyoreh)

By Kim So-youn, Tokyo correspondent

The 46th session of the World Heritage Committee commenced on Sunday in New Delhi, India. Whether the Sado mine complex in Japan’s Niigata Prefecture, where many Koreans were brought against their will and forced into backbreaking work during the Japanese colonial occupation, will be designated as a World Heritage site is a much-contested issue between Japan and South Korea. The decision could be made at any point between July 26 to 29.
 
In an attempt to divert attention from the controversy over the use of Korean slave labor, the Japanese government tried to avoid the issue entirely by limiting the mine’s timeline specifically to the Edo era (1603-1867), prior to colonization of Korea, when submitting its proposal to UNESCO.
 
However, its efforts were thwarted by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), an advisory body of UNESCO. While ICOMOS acknowledged that the mine complex is worthy of being considered for inscription in the World Heritage list, it made several requests and called for a “referral.” One of the requests concerns providing information about the forced mobilization of Koreans.
 
The council asked Japan to include explanations and exhibits that provide historical insight into the Sado mine complex that are not limited to a certain period but cover all of the periods in which mining took place, essentially acknowledging South Korea’s demand that the entire of history of the mine be presented to the public, forced mobilization and all. 

While the Japanese government maintains that no such forced mobilization of workers took place, such claims are far from persuasive. The true history of the forced mobilization of Koreans at the Sado mine complex was brought to light not by South Korea, but by Japanese civil society. 
 
In August 1991, 33 years ago, Pandora’s box was opened by Michio Hayashi, a monk of Sado Island’s Shokoji Temple who had been interested in Zainichi issues, when he acquired a register of cigarette distribution to Koreans at the Sado mine complex.
 
The register, which was made in 1944-1945, during the Pacific War, was created when the Mitsubishi Materials Corporation distributed cigarettes to its workers and included the names and birthdates of around 400 Koreans.
 
Hayashi, along with other locals, visited South Korea three times from 1991 to 1995 to find the victims of forced mobilization who had worked at the Sado mine complex. The victims provided vivid testimonies, saying, “I saw a deserter get captured and thoroughly beaten,” and “I was dragged to Sado Island because I was told that there was a certain number of people who needed to be taken from each region,” and “We were always starving and kept under watch.”
 
Victims’ testimonies were not the only evidence of the forced mobilization of Koreans, with an abundance of documents that had been written by the company overseeing the Sado mine complex, official documents issued by the Japanese government and police, and other documents from Niigata Prefecture.
 
The outbreak of the Pacific War, which took place from 1941 to 1945, prompted those at the Sado mine to begin intensively mining not only gold but also copper, zinc and lead for war munitions. The lack of manpower led them to mobilize 1,500 workers from Korea, a Japanese colony at the time.
 
In a volume on the prefecture’s modern history published in 1988, Niigata Prefecture wrote clearly: “Routine labor mobilization, which began in 1939, took place under the name of ‘recruitment, government placement, and conscription,’ but it does not change the fact that Koreans were forcibly taken for labor.”
 
I met Hayashi, who spearheaded the search for South Korean victims of forced labor by going back and forth between South Korea and Japan 30 years ago, in August 2022.
 
“We need to see historical facts for what they are. We cannot run away from them,” he told me at the time. “For the sake of retaining our dignity as humans, we, the Japanese, should continuously be reprimanded for the wartime issues our country should take responsibility for, such as the forced mobilization of Koreans.”
 
Hayashi passed away at the age of 77 this March after suffering deteriorating health. Will his hopes become a reality?

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