Old Mitsubishi row houses are seen in Bupyeong District, Incheon in this March 2019 file photo. Courtesy of Incheon's Bupyeong District Office

Following criticism that locations bearing witness to Japan’s forced mobilization of Koreans during its 1910-45 colonial rule have not been properly preserved, the state agency has belatedly stepped in.

The Korea Heritage Service (KHS) recently issued a public call for bids for a project to map places linked to Japan’s wartime labor and conscription drive. The agency said the study will review their current condition, assess their historical and cultural values and lay out criteria for possible designation as national heritage. The study is scheduled to run through December.

It marks the first comprehensive, government-led effort to investigate such sites.

Forced mobilization refers to the Japanese Empire’s wartime policy of conscripting people, materials and financial resources across its territories to sustain its military campaigns during the Asia-Pacific War (1931-45). After invading Manchuria in 1931, the empire drew heavily on the Korean Peninsula, seizing supplies and mobilizing Koreans for military service, civilian labor and the production and transportation of war materials.

A 2016 report by the Commission on Verification and Support for the Victims of Forced Mobilization under Japanese Colonialism in Korea estimated that some 7.8 million Koreans were drafted as soldiers or laborers both inside and outside the peninsula. It also identified 7,467 workplaces within Korea where forced labor occurred, including coal and metal mines, munitions factories and military construction sites.

Last September, Rep. Son Sol of the minor Progressive Party criticized the KHS for never having commissioned a formal study to locate and document domestic remnants of wartime mobilization. She pointed out that the only officially recognized heritage site that attests to Japan’s forced labor practices is a former Mitsubishi company housing complex in Incheon.

“It is a serious dereliction of duty to demand Japan’s apology and compensation for forced mobilization while failing to preserve the very sites where it took place here at home,” Son said.

Source: Korea Times News