The UNESCO World Heritage committee decided to register Japan's controversial Sado gold mine as a cultural heritage site.
For this, Japan agreed to include it in an exhibit of its dark history of abusing Korean labourers during World War II.
The mine on an island off the coast of Niigata in northern Japan operated for nearly 400 years.
It was the world's largest gold producer before closing in 1989.
Seoul has said some Koreans brought to Japan during its 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula were put to forced labour at the mine.
Another controversial Japanese site was granted UNESCO recognition in 2015.
Gunkanjima, or Battleship Island, in Nagasaki prefecture, was a former coal mine site recognised as important to the Meiji Industrial Revolution in Japan.