Photo/Illutration Part of the Aikawa Gold and Silver Mine complex in Sado, Niigata Prefecture (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

It would be difficult to have the ancient gold and silver mines on Sado island in Niigata Prefecture included next year on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, education minister Shinsuke Suematsu said July 28.

Speaking with reporters, Suematsu said UNESCO officials had found part of the recommendation document submitted for the nomination to be insufficient and said a revised version would be submitted in September.

While Suematsu insisted there was nothing wrong with the original document, he said a new one would be sent in as not doing so would delay the recommendation process.

South Korea had called for the withdrawal of the nomination on the grounds the Sado complex is strongly associated with Japan using forced Korean labor during its 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

The government submitted the recommendation in February, claiming the Sado complex continued to use traditional manual mining techniques between the 16th and 19th centuries even as the rest of the world was mechanizing the mining process.

Ordinarily, an advisory panel to UNESCO assesses whether to grant World Heritage status to a candidate site. An evaluation of the Sado mine complex was expected to have been made at a World Heritage Committee meeting in summer 2023.

That schedule has been made uncertain, however, because this year’s meeting initially set to be held in Russia has been postponed after the nation’s February invasion of Ukraine.

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