Japan held a memorial ceremony near the Sado Island Gold Mines, listed this summer as a UNESCO World Heritage site after the country moved past years of disputes with South

Japan held a memorial service on Sunday near the Sado Island Gold Mines, despite South Korea's last-minute boycott of the event that highlighted tensions between the neighbors over the issue of Korean forced laborers at the site before and during World War II.

SADO: Japanese officials on Sunday paid tribute to workers at the Sado Island Gold Mines but refrained from offering an apology for Japan’s wartime use of Korean forced laborers, underscoring persistent tensions between the two countries over historical issues.

South Korea’s government says it has decided not to attend a memorial service near Japan’s Sado Island Gold Mines due to unspecified disagreements with Japan over the event, which stirred longstanding tensions over the abuse of Korean forced laborers at the site before the end of World War II.

Korean officials skipped Japan's memorial service held near the Sado mine site, Sunday, in an apparent protest against Tokyo’s 'insincerity' in addressing the dark history related to the site, where approximately 1,

South Korea said Saturday it will not attend a memorial ceremony in Japan honoring forced labor victims, including Koreans, from an old Japanese mine complex, amid controversy over Tokyo's decision to send a senior official with hard-line views on history to the event.