China denounced Japan on Tuesday for playing a “word game” with its history of forced labor after Japan’s foreign minister sought to water down the acknowledgement of its forced labor practices.
Japan won the U.N. cultural body’s approval on Sunday to have some of its early industrial sites be granted UNESCO’s World Heritage status.
The approval came after South Korea lifted its opposition against the bid by Japan, which acknowledged at the Sunday meeting that many Korean and other people “were brought against their will and were forced to work” at some of the sites in the early 20th century.
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters in Tokyo that the acknowledgement of “forced to work” does not mean that the labor was forced.
Asked about the remarks by Kishida, China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular press briefing, “As we all know, the forced recruitment and enslavement of laborers were heinous crimes committed by the Japanese military during its aggression and colonial rule.”
“Japan plays a word game on the serious history issue which only reveals itself of a lack of minimum credibility on the history issue,” Hua said. “We urge Japan to take a responsible attitude, look squarely at and properly handle the relevant history issue.”
Japan occupied the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945 and parts of China during World War II. Tens of thousands of Korean people and Chinese prisoners of war were brought to the Japanese industrial sites at that time.
China had voiced support for South Korea’s opposition against the Japanese bid because Chinese people were also forced to work at the Japanese industrial sites from the mid-19th to early 20th century. (Yonhap)
