The real island, Hashima, where Japan used Korean prisoners as slave labor, is the inspiration behind the movie "Battleship Island" which stars “Descendants of the Sun” actor Song Joong-ki as Park Mu Young. But the production team of the Korean film would actually shoot it in Nami Island, Chunceon, Gangwon Province in South Korea.
The Guardian reported that Japan had applied with UNESCO for the international body to recognize Hashima Island as a world heritage site. The island, also called Gunkanjima, which means Battleship Island, is off Nagasaki Prefecture in southern Japan.
The island, a 30-minute boat trip away from Nagasaki, used around 60,000 Koreans as workers in the coal mine and factories toward the end of Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula in 1910-45. UNESCO officials are set to deliberate in Bonn, Germany, this weekend the application.
The site houses crumbling buildings and industrial machinery, witness to the forcible deployment of Koreans to the island, which is why South Korea is opposing Japan’s application over allegations that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is trying to sanitize the country’s and island’s dark history.
Japan wants UNESCO to recognize Hashima as a heritage site as a museum of its rapid industrialization from the 1850s to 1910 when Tokyo aimed to catch up with western nations. In its application, Japan omitted mentioning the use of conscripted labor in the 1930s and 1940s.
Mitsubishi, the developer of Gunkanjima, and other Japanese firms based in Hashima that used forced labor, said that all reparation demands and compensation were covered and settled by postwar treaties.
William Underwood, an American expert on forced labor during that era, said that Koreans were treated as second-class objects and were assigned some of the most difficult and dangerous jobs in the island. That explains why Song Joong-ki needs to go on a diet and exercise to lose weight and appear credible as forced labor in the upcoming movie which begins shooting on Friday, June 17.
According to CNET, Hashima once was home to 5,259 people, but it was abandoned in 1974 and left to rot. However, with the construction of a new dock, walkways and viewing area in 2009, the island reopened to the general public which is why Japan wants it declared a UNESCO heritage site to draw more visitors.