(Transcript from World News Radio)
The United Nations agency watching over world-heritage sites has decided to add 23 sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution to the World Heritage list.
The decision by UNESCO's World Heritage Committee came after difficult negotiations with South Korea over whether to acknowledge the sites' history of wartime forced labour.
Ron Sutton has the details.
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Japan says the sites UNESCO listed played a pivotal role in its rapid industrialisation and adaptation of Western technologies from the late 19th Century to the early 20th.
It says that makes them worthy of being recognised for their World Heritage value.
But the decision to seek their listing provoked opposition in South Korea, where there are still bitter memories of Japanese colonial rule between 1910 and 1945.
Included in the list are seven facilities where hundreds-of-thousands of Koreans were forced into slave labour under Japanese colonial rule.
World Heritage Committee chairwoman Maria Boehmer from Germany says Japan and South Korea were able to reach a settlement that allowed the listing to go ahead.
"(German, then translated): Japan and South Korea have worked together and have made possible today's decision. Today's decision shows again the power of the UNESCO World Heritage convention. It's the spirit of the World Heritage convention that, over and over, brings us together, even in difficult situations."
Japan's ambassador to UNESCO, Kuni Sato, says, under the settlement, Japan will acknowledge its historical responsibilities.
"More specifically, Japan is prepared to take measures that allow an understanding that there were a large number of Koreans and others who were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites. And that during World War Two, the government of Japan also implemented its policy of requisition."
The Ambassador says the Japanese government will also establish an information centre to remember the victims of Japanese actions.
"Japan is prepared to incorporate appropriate measures into interpretative strategy to remember the victims, such as the establishment of an information centre."
South Korea's Deputy Foreign Minister Cho Tae Yeol says his country is prepared to accept the agreement negotiated by the UNESCO committee.
"The government of the Republic of Korea has decided to join the committee's consensus decision on this matter, as it has full confidence in the authority of the committee and trusts that the government of Japan will implement in good faith the measures it has announced before this august body today."
The Deputy Foreign Minister says the agreement negotiated with UNESCO helps to honour the victims of Japan's colonial actions.
"Today's decision marks another important step toward remembering the pain and suffering of the victims, healing the painful wounds of history and reaffirming that the historical truth of the unfortunate past should also be reflected in an objective manner."
Among the sites covered by the World Heritage listing are a shipyard in Nagasaki, a defunct coal mine in Hashima, a steel mill in Fukuoka and other facilities still in use.
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