❖ The UNESCO World Heritage committee decided to register Japan's controversial Sado gold mine as a cultural heritage site.

❖ For this, Japan agreed to include it in an exhibit of its dark history of abusing Korean labourers during World War II. 

❖ The mine on an island off the coast of Niigata in northern Japan operated for nearly 400 years.

❖ It was the world's largest gold producer before closing in 1989.

❖ Seoul has said some Koreans brought to Japan during its 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula were put to forced labour at the mine

. ❖ Another controversial Japanese site was granted UNESCO recognition in 2015.

❖ Gunkanjima, or Battleship Island, in Nagasaki prefecture, was a former coal mine site recognised as important to the Meiji Industrial Revolution in Japan