South Korea has paid tribute to wartime Korean forced laborers at Japan’s Sado Island Gold Mines in a memorial ceremony.

Japan has held a memorial ceremony near the Sado Island Gold Mines despite a last-minute boycott of the event by South Korea that highlighted tensions between the neighbors over the brutal wartime use

The Japanese government on Monday expressed regret over South Korea boycotting a Japan-led event honoring wartime forced labor victims, including Koreans, from an old Japanese mine complex. The remark came as South Korea boycotted the memorial held on Sado Island,