The ongoing session of the World Heritage Committee is drawing keen attention here, as it will determine whether to put Japan’s controversial Meji-era industrial sites, linked to wartime slave labor, on its heritage list later this week.

The session opened in Bonn, Germany, Sunday amid talks between Seoul and Tokyo over the latter’s bid to put 23 sites of “Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution” on the World Heritage Sites List. The WHC is expected to make its decision over the listing of the sites on Friday or Saturday.

Seoul has demanded either that seven of the sites be excluded from the candidate list, as nearly 57,900 Koreans were forced to work there during the 1910-45 colonial era, or that Tokyo clearly present the facts about forced labor for visitors to know the dark side of the sites’ history.

After the meeting with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida on June 21, Seoul’s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told reporters that “from a broad perspective,” the two sides had reached an agreement. His remarks were construed as Tokyo having agreed to specify that forced labor took place at the sites.

The decision at the WHC session is usually to be made based on consensus among the 21 WHC members. But a vote could be set up should the members fail to reach consensus ― a situation that all want to avoid because the voting procedure could undermine the committee’s consensus-based decision-making process and lead to a politicization of the issue.

To avoid the situation, Seoul and Tokyo have engaged in intense talks.

Last week, Choi Jong-moon, Seoul’s ambassador for cultural and UNESCO affairs, met with Jun Shinmi, director-general for cultural affairs at Tokyo’s Foreign Ministry, to discuss how to implement the “broad” agreement that their foreign ministers had reached.

Observers say Japan could present the facts about slave labor by specifying it in a WHC decision document, installing signposts to explain the facts at the sites, distributing pamphlets about slave labor at the sites or putting the facts on the Internet homepage of the sites.

During the WHC session that will last through next Wednesday, it will determine the fate of nearly 40 candidate sites including South Korea’s historic sites of the ancient Baekje Kingdom (18 B.C.-660 A.D.) for world heritage status.

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