The Silent Tunnel: Korean Forced Labor and the Fault Lines of Memory at the Sado Mine (1940s)
Sado Island lies in the Sea of Japan. In the 1940s, in the midst of the Pacific War, Japan faced a serious labor shortage and sent many people from the Korean Peninsula to the Japanese mainland under the name of "conscription. About 1,500 Koreans were mobilized to work at the Sado Mine, where they were forced to engage in hard labor such as mining and transportation in underground tunnels where oxygen was scarce.
Their working conditions were extremely poor, with a lack of protective equipment and safety measures, and long working hours being the order of the day. Wages were unreasonably low and sometimes remained unpaid. A system of surveillance was put in place to prevent escape, and violent management was said to exist. Many workers lost their lives due to accidents or illnesses, which were rarely recorded. Even though the labor was nominally conscripted, the reality was that it was clearly coercive.
This past has often been overlooked since the end of World War II, but in South Korea, victims and their bereaved families have been sharing their testimonies and working to pass on their memories. The Japanese government, on the other hand, has maintained that recruitment was based on the domestic laws of the time, a position that was rekindled in 2022 when the Sado Mine was nominated as a candidate for World Heritage Site. The avoidance of the term "forced labor" from the nomination form provoked a strong backlash from South Korea, further deepening the gap in historical understanding between Japan and South Korea.
Korean labor at the Sado Mine has become a symbol of human rights violations, and at the same time, it has become an existence that wavers between memory and politics. Even now, the debate over how to convey the truth and how to pass on history continues. The silent tunnels speak to us. Can we dig up once again the voices buried in oblivion?
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