and Japan agreed on a compromise: that Japan would include the use of forced labour in the explanation of facilities in relevant sites and both nations would cooperate towards the approval of each other's World Heritage Site candidates. In July 2015, during the WHC meeting, South Korea withdrew its opposition after Japan's acknowledgement of this issue as part of the history of the island, specifically noting 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 [including Hashima island]" and that Japan was "prepared to incorporate appropriate measures into the interpretive strategy to remember the victims such as the establishment of information centre". The site was subsequently approved for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage list on 5 July as part of the item Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining. On the same day immediately after the UNESCO WHC meeting, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida publicly explained that "the remarks [forced to work under harsh conditions] by the Japanese government representative did not mean 'forced labor and that "they were requisitioned under the National Requisition Ordinance which was applied to the Korean Peninsula at the time and that, given the nature of the policy of requisition, there were also cases in which they were requisitioned against their will". Responding to this controversy, a South Korean government official said, "If you look at the larger context, it says that they were taken away against their will and 'forced to work' under harsh conditions. No matter how you look at it, the only interpretation is that this was forced labor." A monitoring mechanism for the implementation of 'the measures to remember the victims' was set up by the World Heritage Committee and it was assessed during the WHC Session in June 2018. In this meeting, the UNESCO committee concluded that Japan's effort and progress to implement appropriate measures to commemorate the victims and acknowledge the full history of the island were unsatisfactory and requested Japan to keep their promises. Access When people resided on the island, the Nomo Shosen line served the island from Nagasaki Port via Iōjima Island and Takashima Island. Twelve round-trip services were available per day in 1970. It took 50 minutes to travel from the island to Nagasaki. After all