A Japanese government spokesperson said Monday it was “regrettable” that South Korea pulled out of a memorial ceremony Sunday to honor wartime labor victims who worked at the now-defunct gold mines on Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture, including those from the Korean Peninsula.
Seoul is believed to take issue with media reports that Akiko Ikuina, parliamentary vice minister for foreign affairs who represented the Japanese government at the ceremony, has visited Tokyo’s war-related Yasukuni Shrine in the past.
However, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said, “There was no issue (with sending Ikuina to the ceremony). We acknowledge that Ikuina has not visited Yasukuni Shrine after becoming an Upper House member, and we explained the facts to the South Korean side.”
The ceremony was held for the first time on Sunday.
The event came after the Sado Island Gold Mines were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site earlier this year. On Sunday, the ceremony started in the Niigata city of Sado at 1 p.m., and about 70 participants, including Niigata Gov. Hideyo Hanazumi, mourned for the deceased mine workers and offered floral tributes.
The South Korean government initially opposed the World Heritage designation, claiming that people from the Korean Peninsula had been forced to work at the Sado mines. But it accepted the designation after the Japanese government promised to hold an annual memorial ceremony for the Sado mine workers.
From the South Korean side, government officials and the relatives of former mine workers were slated to attend Sunday’s ceremony but decided to skip it at the last minute on Saturday.
A South Korean foreign ministry official cited difficulties in reaching a mutually acceptable agreement with Japan before the ceremony as the reason for skipping the ceremony.
In her speech at the ceremony, Ikuina mentioned Korean mine workers who “engaged in difficult work under dangerous and harsh conditions in the mines far away from their homes, while thinking of their families.”
“Now that (the Sado mines) have been designated a World Heritage site, we must renew our pledge to pass (the history) on to the future,” she added.
The absence of South Korean participants at the ceremony was “regrettable,” said Ko Nakano, 83, head of the ceremony’s organizing committee. “We hoped (people from the South Korean side) would also attend.”
Meanwhile, the South Korean government held on Monday morning its own ceremony at the site on the island of an accommodation facility for mine workers from the Korean Peninsula.
Some 30 people, including South Korean Ambassador to Japan Park Cheol-hee and nine bereaved family members of the workers from the peninsula, offered silent prayers and flowers.
In an address at the ceremony, Park vowed not to forget the tears and sacrifices of South Korean workers behind the history of the mines. He stressed that the Japanese and South Korean governments must make sincere efforts to ensure that the painful history will continue to be remembered.
South Korean media criticized Ikuina’s speech at Sunday’s ceremony, saying there was no mention of the workers being “forced” to work at the mines.