South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se went on a vigorous diplomatic campaign over the weekend to persuade the international community to oppose Japan’s bid to put its “industrial revolution” sites on the World Heritage Sites list without revealing the dark side of their history.

On Saturday, Yun visited Croatia and held talks with his Croatian counterpart Vesna Pusic to underscore that nearly 57,900 Koreans were forced to work during Japan’s colonial rule at seven of the 23 sites of “Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution” that Tokyo seeks to register on the list.

Yun urged Croatia to support Seoul’s position that in any way, Japan should clearly present the historical fact of Koreans’ forced labor during Japan’s 1910-45 occupation of the Korean Peninsula.

Pusic was quoted by Seoul officials as saying that she “sufficiently understood” Korea’s stance.

It was the first time for a South Korean foreign minister to visit the country in southeastern Europe since the two sides established diplomatic ties in 1992.

Along with Senegal, Qatar, Jamaica and India, Croatia is a vice chair of the 21-member World Heritage Committee, which will convene a general session from June 28-July 8 in Bonn, Germany, to make a final decision regarding Japan’s bid for the world heritage status.

Before his trip to Croatia, Yun visited Germany, the WHC chair, Friday. He met with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to call for Germany to play an “active role” to prevent Japan from concealing the fact concerning hard labor at its industrial 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 that 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.

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.

During his stay in Germany, Yun visited an institution in Berlin that was once used as a camp to accommodate some 2,000 forced laborers and currently stores historical documents about forced labor under the Nazi government.

In the visitors’ book, Yun wrote, “I express my respect to Germans who move forward into the future while healing forced laborers and other victims during World War II, and the scars of the past (in general).”

On Sunday, Yun was set to fly to New York to meet with Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman, whose country took the rotating chairmanship of the U.N. Security Council this month. Yun was expected to call for support from Malaysia, which is also a WHC member.

This Monday, Yun is to fly to Washington D.C. where he and U.S. Energy Secretary Earnest Moniz are to make an official signing of the newly revised civilian atomic energy accord. The two countries made a preliminary signing of the accord on April 22.

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