Seoul rejects Japan’s Sado Mines memorial due to lack of acknowledgment of forced labor

South Korea will not take part in Japan's memorial for past workers of the Sado Gold Mines where hundreds of Koreans were forced into labor during Japanese colonial rule.

On Thursday a South Korean official told reporters here that Seoul would sit out the memorial for the second straight year as it has yet to narrow differences with Tokyo over the term "forced labor."

South Korea has been urging Japan to disclose the full history of forced labor during World War Two just as Tokyo had promised to do when the Sado mines were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site last year.

At least one-thousand-five-hundred Koreans were forced to slave at the Sado Island Gold Mines from 1939 until Korea was liberated in 1945.