The recently increased interest in transnational, serial nominations for UNESCO World Heritage status and comparable forms of official recognition demonstrates the critical role of heritage as diplomacy. There are both opportunities and challenges, nevertheless, when treating difficult heritage as diplomacy, such as in the case of colonial prisons embedded in memories of punishment and imprisonment across borders. In a study of two defunct prisons in Seoul and Lushun, both of which were part of the Japanese-occupied territories, we illustrate the dynamics of an ongoing cross-border collaboration towards a joint nomination. We trace how heritagisation involving China and Korea has unfolded amid the ever-shifting geopolitics in northeast Asia, exposing the multilateral nature of heritage as diplomacy. In a region where geopolitics remains difficult, difficult heritage may even become heritage off diplomacy when other diplomatic challenges arise.
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