The government on Friday approved a plan to recommend old industrial facilities in eight prefectures for inclusion next year on the list of World Heritage cultural sites.

The recommendation will be submitted to UNESCO by the end of this month, officials said.

The overall recommendation has been titled "Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution."

The sites comprise 23 facilities, including the Hashima coal complex in Nagasaki Prefecture, representing Japan's industrialization from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. Some of the facilities, such as the Nagasaki shipyard, are still partly in operation.

The facilities are located in Iwate, Shizuoka, Yamaguchi, Fukuoka, Saga, Nagasaki, Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectures.

Members of an advisory body to UNESCO are expected to visit the facilities this summer and fall for on-site inspections, and the World Heritage Committee is expected to decide whether to list them at its meeting in 2015, the officials said.

South Korea has asked Japan to reconsider seeking the listing of industrial facilities where Koreans were pressed into slave labor during World War II.