South Korea will not attend Japan’s Sado Mine Commemoration Event

SEOUL — The South Korean government said Saturday it will not attend a memorial service near the gold mines of Sado Island in Japan due to unspecified differences with Tokyo over the event, which has sparked long-running tensions over the mistreatment of Korean forced laborers at the event. place before the end of the world. Second war.

The decision marked a rare show of friction between the countries since the inauguration of South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol in 2022. Yoon has prioritized improving relations with Japan after years of disputes over their bitter history and strengthening trilateral security cooperation with Washington to counter North Korean nuclear threats, but has faced accusations at home that he has neglected the suffering of Korean survivors.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it was not possible to resolve differences between both governments before a planned event near the mines on Sunday. What the differences were is not specified.

Japanese officials had no immediate comment.

Some South Koreans criticized Yoon’s government for supporting the event without securing a clear commitment from Japan to draw attention to the plight of Korean workers.

South Korean sentiment about the event worsened after the Japanese government said this week it would send Akiko Ikuina, the country’s parliamentary deputy foreign minister, to the event. Ikuina reportedly visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo after her election as a deputy in 2022. The temple honors the country’s estimated 2.5 million war dead, including convicted war criminals. Japan’s neighbors view the temple as a symbol of the country’s past militarism.

There were also complaints that South Korea agreed to pay travel expenses for family members of Korean victims who were invited to the ceremony.

Relations between Seoul and Tokyo have long been strained by grievances stemming from Japan’s brutal rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945, when hundreds of thousands of Koreans were conscripted as forced labor for Japanese companies or as sex slaves in Tokyo’s military-run brothels. World War II. Many forced laborers are already dead, and the survivors are over 90 years old.

Historians say that during World War II, hundreds of Koreans were forced to work in the Sado mines in harsh and brutal conditions. Japan’s government said Sunday’s ceremony would honor “all the workers” who died in the mines, without specifying who they were. Critics saw it as part of a persistent effort to whitewash Japan’s history of sexual and labor exploitation before and during the war.

The 16th-century mines on Sado Island, off the west coast of Niigata Prefecture, operated for nearly 400 years before closing in 1989 and were once the world’s largest gold producer. Earlier this year, the mines were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site after Tokyo and Seoul settled a decades-long dispute. South Korea refused to be listed after Japan agreed to more clearly acknowledge the suffering of Koreans at the exhibition and include Koreans in the memorial ceremony.

In 2023, Yun took a major step toward improving relations with Japan, which had deteriorated for years due to historical grievances and trade disputes, by announcing a plan to compensate Korean forced laborers from the colonial period without requiring contributions from Japanese companies.

Yun’s plan, based on money raised in South Korea, immediately sparked a domestic backlash from former forced laborers and their supporters, who demanded direct compensation from Japanese companies and a new apology from the Japanese government.