South Korea's delegation, including UNESCO Ambassador Kim Ji-hee (R), applauds as Turkey is selected as the next host country at the 48th UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Busan on Wednesday. Photo by Yonhap
The first UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting held in South Korea wrapped up Wednesday after a 10-day session that added 25 new sites to the global heritage list, including Japan's ancient Asuka-Fujiwara capitals and France's Normandy D-Day landing beaches.
The 48th session at the BEXCO convention center in the southeastern port city of Busan brought the total number of World Heritage properties to 1,273 across 173 countries, the committee said.
Among the new inscriptions were the "Asuka-Fujiwara: Archaeological sites of Japan's Ancient Capitals and Related Properties," a collection of Asuka-period ruins in the Asian country, and the "Beaches of the D-Day Landings, Normandy, 1944" in northwestern France, which groups together the beaches where the Allied landings that helped turn the tide of World War II took place.
South Korea secured an extension of the boundaries of its 2021-listed "Getbol, Korean Tidal Flats" to include additional tidal flat areas on the western and southern coasts. Including the Korean tidal flats, two sites had their boundaries expanded during the session and a separate case involved a change of criteria.
