Japan plans to rebut UNESCO's recommendations that the country should provide a better explanation about Korean victims of wartime labor at its Tokyo information center on industrial sites listed as World Cultural Heritage sites, government sources said Saturday.
At UNESCO's World Heritage Committee session held from Friday to July 31, Japan plans to explain that its exhibition at the Industrial Heritage Information Center on people from Korea who worked in the Hashima Coal Mine off Nagasaki — one of the 23 registered sites — is based on historical facts and appropriate, the sources said.
As Japan is not a member of this term's 21-nation committee, it cannot be involved in discussions or adoptions of documents. But Kenko Sone, the Foreign Ministry's director general for cultural affairs, plans to attend the online session as an observer and expects to be requested to speak on the matter, the sources said.