Seoul and Tokyo struggled Tuesday to hammer out a compromise over Japan’s bid to put its major “industrial revolution” sites, including those related to Koreans’ colonial-era forced labor, on the World Heritage list.

During the second round of talks in Seoul, they engaged in another intense debate with Seoul maintaining Tokyo should exclude seven of the 23 sites of “Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution” ― where nearly 57,900 Koreans were forced to work during the 1910-45 colonial era ― from its candidate application.

Choi Jong-moon, Seoul’s ambassador for cultural and UNESCO affairs, and Jun Shimmi, Tokyo’s Foreign Ministry’s director-general for cultural affairs, led each delegation, hoping to avoid a diplomatically tricky vote at a meeting of the World Heritage Committee slated for June 28-July 8 in Bonn, Germany.

Following the endorsement by the International Council on Monuments and Sites, an advisory panel for UNESCO, the final decision over the listing of a site as world heritage is usually based on consensus among the 21 WHC members.

But a vote could be set up in theory should the committee fail to build consensus on divisive issues such as Japan’s push to list its Meiji-era industrial sites ― a scenario that would force WHC members into making a tough choice on whether to side with Korea or Japan.

During the second round of the talks, which came after the first meeting on May 22, Seoul focused on persuading Tokyo to reveal historical facts about wartime forced labor at the seven sites should Japan insist on putting all of the 23 sites on the world heritage list ― in line with ICOMOS’ recent recommendation that Tokyo disclose the “full history” of the sites.

Making its bid for world heritage status, Tokyo set the period of 1850-1910 for the evaluation of the historical value of the sites, arguing it as the period of Japan’s path to becoming an industrial nation. But critics see the move as a deliberate attempt to whitewash its wartime wrongdoings.

As both sides are adamant on their positions, observers say the talks between Seoul and Tokyo could be another unfruitful negotiation as their past talks on history issues, including Japan’s wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women, have always been.

Some critics speculated that Japan might try to use the talks with South Korea to show that they were at least trying to negotiate a solution with South Korea over the controversial listing of the industrialization sites.

A question mark hangs over which side would win should a vote be set up at the WHC meeting.

A decision will be passed if two thirds of the WHC member states present at the voting approve it. Seoul officials believe the other 19 of the total 21 member states have close ties to both countries, making it difficult to predict the outcome of the possible vote.

Seoul officials including Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul have engaged in brisk diplomacy to explain Seoul’s position on the issue and ask for support from a series of WHC member nations including France.

Meanwhile, ANN, a television news network run by Japan’s TV Asahi Corporation, reported last week that only 12 WHC members including India, Vietnam and Poland expressed their verbal or written support to Japan, while seven nations including Germany had yet to stake out their clear positions.

Japan’s 23 candidate sites that are located in 11 cities across eight prefectures include the Hashima undersea coal mine off Nagasaki, known as “Battleship Island”; the Miike coal mine; and Mitsubishi’s Nagasaki shipyard facilities.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)