S. Korea not to attend Sado mine memorial: foreign ministry

South Korea will not be attending a memorial ceremony scheduled to take place in Japan to honor wartime forced labor victims, including many Koreans, from an old Japanese mine complex, the foreign ministry said Saturday.

The decision, made only a day before the planned ceremony, came after Tokyo announced that a Japanese vice foreign minister with an apparent hard-line political stance on past history will be attending the ceremony as its government representative.

“We have decided not to attend the memorial ceremony for Sado Mine, scheduled for Nov. 24, taking into account various circumstances surrounding the event,” the ministry said in a message to the media.

“There was insufficient time to reconcile differing positions between the diplomatic authorities of both countries, making it unlikely to reach a mutually acceptable agreement before the ceremony,” it said.

Japan’s announcement Thursday to send Akiko Ikuina, a parliamentary vice minister at Japan’s foreign ministry, to the ceremony further raised doubts in South Korea over whether Japan is truly committed to fulfilling its pledge to honor the forced labor victims in a sincere manner.

Ikuina visited the Yasukuni Shrine to pay tribute to Japan’s war dead following her election. The shrine, regarded as a symbol of Japan’s militaristic past, has been a source of tension, with South Korea strongly opposing visits or offerings made by Japanese government officials.

Japan is set to hold the memorial ceremony on Sado Island, off its west coast, on Sunday to commemorate the victims who were forced into hard labor at the Sado gold and silver mines under Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of Korea.

Japan agreed to hold such an event for the victims as a condition for Seoul’s consent to the location’s designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (Yonhap)