Experts voice concerns over changes to UNESCO guidelines as tensions escalate over WWII heritage sites

In January, Japan’s proposal to nominate several gold and silver mines on Sado Island as a UNESCO World Heritage site sparked controversy in South Korea, which views the site in a much darker light than Japan’s portrayal.

The nomination emphasizes the mines' history during the Edo period, spanning from 1603 to 1857.

A New York Times report reveals that 'Korean workers are mentioned only in passing, in two brief lines within a centuries-long timeline, with no mention of forced labor.'

Locals on Sado Island view the nomination as an opportunity to boost international tourism to the mines, which are open to visitors.

For Koreans, this is seen as another attempt to ignore the painful history of forced labor during Japan's WWII occupation. Around 1,500 Koreans were conscripted to work in the mines during the war.

That same month, Japan confirmed its decision to proceed with the UNESCO nomination, despite strong protests from South Korean officials, who criticized the move for disregarding 'the painful history of forced labor,' according to the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

This is not the first time Japan's World Heritage sites have stirred controversy: some of the Meiji-era industrial sites, such as the museums in Yamaguchi Prefecture and Nagasaki, have faced criticism from South Korea for failing to acknowledge the forced labor used in their construction.

This latest development is just another chapter in the ongoing series of disputes surrounding World War II-related UNESCO nominations in East Asia.

For years, Japan has openly criticized UNESCO for its lack of transparency and fairness in decision-making.

However, Japan now risks being perceived as hypocritical for its stance. Last year, it succeeded in persuading UNESCO to amend the rules for its Memory of the World (MOW) program, which focuses on preserving documentary heritage.

The revised rule mandates that countries in disagreement over MOW nominations enter a 'dialogue phase.'

Experts argue that this change could effectively grant nations the power to veto historical narratives, raising concerns about the future of heritage preservation.

Kyung-Ho Suh, chairperson of Korea’s Memory of the World National Committee, explains, 'The contestation doesn’t require strictly logical reasoning, which could lead to abuse by member countries.'

'What happens if Russia objects to a Ukrainian nomination?' Suh questions, highlighting the potential for conflicts in the new system.

'The uncomfortable shadows of the wartime past' is how some describe the ongoing disputes over historical memory in East Asia.

Over the site of a mass grave in Nanjing, China, known as 'the pit of 10,000 corpses,' a vast memorial hall now stands, covering more than 100,000 square meters to honor the victims of the Japanese army’s 1937 assault during the Nanjing Massacre.

According to the travel agency China Discovery, it is one of China’s most-visited tourist destinations.

In 2015, China submitted a nomination to UNESCO’s Memory of the World (MOW) register for the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall’s collection of documents, along with several other related archives.

The nomination sparked outrage in Japan, which has sought to reshape its identity as 'a peace-loving Asian democracy' since World War II, according to Edward Vickers, a professor at Kyushu University in Japan.

'They are trying to shield that image from being tainted by the uncomfortable and dishonorable shadows of their wartime history,' Vickers explains.

The Nanjing Massacre remains a contentious issue between China and Japan, with Beijing accusing Japan of not fully atoning for its actions. Despite Japan’s objections regarding transparency and fairness, the documents were successfully added to UNESCO’s register in 2016.

In the 2017 cycle, Japan was further challenged when 14 organizations from eight countries, including China, Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan, formed a coalition to nominate the 'Voices of Comfort Women' collection. This archive tells the stories of women from Japanese-occupied territories who were subjected to sexual slavery during WWII.

For Korea, the painful memories of colonial rule remain a lasting trauma, with surviving victims still demanding compensation, according to Suh.

Japan has consistently denied direct government involvement in the 'comfort women' system, and in recent years has sought to erase its wartime history by pressuring U.S. textbooks to remove references to comfort women and urging governments worldwide to dismantle memorials.

In response to the UNESCO nomination, Japanese organizations submitted a counter-nomination, framing the women as voluntary prostitutes. As the largest financial contributor to UNESCO at the time, Japan also withheld its annual funding in 2016 and 2017, demanding reforms to the nomination process.

UNESCO’s executive board recommended that the parties involved engage in dialogue, hoping that a joint nomination could be submitted by all sides. This provision was officially adopted as a guideline in 2021 after Japan requested a thorough review of the competition’s rules.

However, no dialogue has taken place so far, and the 'comfort women' nominations remain unresolved. UNESCO told Dinogo that it 'continues to seek the conditions for this dialogue and will keep trying.'

The Comfort Women Justice Coalition (CWJC), a human rights group based in San Francisco, reports that efforts to engage in discussion have met with 'strong resistance' from Japan. They also claim that UNESCO’s director-general has not responded to repeated requests for a meeting. The coalition argues that the nomination should not be subject to the new rules, as it was submitted prior to their implementation.

The CWJC expressed to Dinogo, 'There is a significant level of hypocrisy at play here.'

'All these governments and organizations claim to champion women’s rights, as does the United Nations. Yet when bodies like UNESCO allow the trivialization of such violence and ignore the voices of survivors, they perpetuate a culture that shames and silences victims... enabling gender-based violence to persist,' CWJC stated.

The appeal for UNESCO’s 'seal of approval.'

The updated guidelines now require that MOW nominations – similar to the UNESCO World Heritage program – must obtain national approval before being considered in the international competition. Previously, any independent organization could submit a nomination.

This means that political parties will have the final authority over nominations, according to Yujie Zhu, a senior lecturer at the Australian National University’s Research School of Humanities and the Arts.

For countries in East Asia, UNESCO status holds immense value and is seen as a 'stamp of authenticity,' says Zhu. 'If something carries this stamp, it becomes the definitive version of history.'

Unlike the new MOW guidelines, UNESCO's World Heritage competition lacks a rule that mandates dialogue in the event of controversial nominations. As a result, Korea cannot 'veto' Japan's Sado Mine nomination, which some view as a double standard.

UNESCO asserts that it does not intervene in relations between member states, but adds that all changes were 'approved by consensus' among the 58 member states of the UNESCO Executive Board, including China, Japan, and South Korea, following a thorough review led by member countries.

Requests for comments sent to Japan’s National Commission for UNESCO and its Agency for Cultural Affairs went unanswered.

Observers are closely watching to determine how, or if, the new rules will influence the ongoing MOW nomination cycle. Although submissions closed in November, final decisions won't be made until 2023.

In the meantime, the 45th annual meeting of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee – where members vote on new site nominations – was scheduled to take place in June in Kazan, Russia.

In late April, UNESCO announced the postponement of this year’s session. No new dates have been set yet.

Japan and China are at odds over the history of Jewish heritage.

The Jewish heritage in Shanghai, where approximately 20,000 Jews took refuge during World War II, could become another contentious UNESCO issue, according to researchers.

In 2017, Japan proposed the inclusion of a record documenting the visas issued to thousands of Jewish refugees by Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese ambassador to Lithuania during the war. However, the nomination was rejected without a clear explanation.

Reports suggest that the Shanghai municipal government has been preparing to submit documents from the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum for UNESCO recognition for several years.

Visitors to the museum today may not recognize it as the same place – in 2020, it reopened after an extensive renovation. The new space now spans nearly 5,000 square meters in the Tilanqiao district of Shanghai, with approximately 1,000 artifacts donated by survivors on display.

However, the government's interest in showcasing Jewish heritage in Shanghai may go beyond mere commemoration: it seems to be a strategic move to stay ahead of Japan.

By nominating documents related to the Shanghai Jews for the Memory of the World (MOW) register, China aims to set the historical record straight and prevent Japan from re-nominating the Sugihara documents, which China believes could result in a skewed and incomplete international understanding of this history.

In 2022, China became UNESCO's largest financial contributor, accounting for 19.704% of the budget, while Japan ranked second at 10.377%.

In the ongoing memory dispute, Japan may have inadvertently harmed its own cause.

According to Shu-mei Huang from National Taiwan University, Japan 'could have proceeded with the application without state approval had the MOW not reformed its nomination process under Japan’s influence,' as she argues in her paper on the memory competition between Japan and China.

Officials from the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum told Dinogo that they are 'currently reviewing the relevant UNESCO Memory of the World selection rules,' but did not confirm whether they had submitted the nomination for Shanghai this year.

Huang suggests that 'China is positioning itself as the key nation that helped Jewish refugees,' despite the fact that the actual number of Jews who fled to Shanghai and who exactly 'saved' them is still debated, with both China and Japan likely overstating their roles in this history.

By the end of World War II in 1945, most Jews had left Shanghai, fleeing before the Communist Party – the current rulers of China – assumed control of the country.

Huang argues that 'heritage and memory have become casualties' in the competitive 'Olympic-like' process that UNESCO nominations have become.