South Korea is expected to discuss with Japan later this month the proposed UNESCO World Heritage listing of some Japanese industrial sites that Seoul opposes, considering them a legacy of Tokyo's wartime practice of conscripting Koreans for forced labor, a media report said Tuesday.
"The bilateral talks are expected to take place in Tokyo late this month," Yonhap News Agency quoted a government source as saying. Details such as the date and participants of the planned talks remain unknown.
South Korea has been attempting to block the Japanese sites' heritage registration, saying around 57,900 Koreans were sent over to work at seven of the 23 sites in Japan that include a coal mine, a steel mill and a shipyard, resulting in the deaths of 94.
Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se has said the proposed listing is "in violation of the World Heritage Convention that protects heritages with universal human values."
The "Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution," representing Japan's industrialization and modernization in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, were just recently endorsed for heritage status by the nongovernmental International Council on Monuments and Sites.
The intergovernmental World Heritage Committee is meeting in July to decide on their registration. South Korea and Japan are among the 21 members in the committee.