Anxious about Japan’s impending release of treated nuclear wastewater from the tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant, hundreds of South Koreans marched in their capital on Saturday. Protesters called for Tokyo to abandon the plans, and expressed anger toward Seoul for endorsing the discharge despite alleged food safety risks.
Saturday’s rally was the latest of weekslong protests since the International Atomic Energy Agency approved the Japanese discharge plans in July, saying that the process would meet international safety standards and pose negligible environmental and health impacts.
The safety of the wastewater release plans has also been advocated by the government of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who in recent months has actively taken steps to repair long-strained ties with its fellow United States ally in the face of growing North Korean nuclear threats.
The Japanese government has said the wastewater release is set to start this summer, but it has not confirmed a specific date.
Wearing raincoats and holding signs that read, “We oppose the disposal of Fukushima’s contaminated water,” and, “No radioactive material is safe for the sea,” the demonstrators marched in light rain through the streets of downtown Seoul. The rallies were proceeding peacefully and there were no immediate reports of clashes or injuries.
South Korea has been trying to calm people’s fears of food contamination and environmental risks ahead of the release of Fukushima’s wastewater, including expanding radiation tests on seafood at the country’s major fish markets and even testing sand from its southern and western beaches. None of the tests have so far triggered safety concerns, Jeon Jae-woo, an official at the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, said during a briefing Friday.
Park Ku-yeon, first vice minister of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, said South Korea was hoping to wrap up working-level consultations with Japan next week over allowing South Korean experts to participate in the monitoring of the release process.
Liberal opposition lawmakers controlling the country’s National Assembly have accused Yoon’s government of putting people’s health at risk while trying to improve bilateral ties.
The Democratic Party said this week that it plans to file a complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Council to highlight the what it says are perils posed by the release of Fukushima’s wastewater, and question whether the IAEA properly reviewed the risks before greenlighting the discharge plans.
The party also urged Yoon to reverse his position and use a trilateral summit later this month with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and U.S. President Joe Biden to state Seoul’s opposition to the wastewater release.
The safety of Fukushima’s wastewater has been a sensitive issue for years between the U.S. allies. South Korea and Japan have been working in recent months to repair relations long strained over wartime historical grievances to address shared concerns such as the North Korean nuclear threat and China’s assertive foreign policy.
A massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 destroyed the Fukushima plant’s cooling systems, causing three reactors to melt and contaminate their cooling water.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, which operates the facility, has been collecting, filtering, and storing the water in hundreds of tanks, which will reach their capacity in early 2024.
Japan first announced plans to discharge the treated water into the sea in 2018, saying the water will be further diluted by seawater before being released in a carefully controlled process that will take decades to complete.
The water is being treated with what’s called an Advanced Liquid Processing System, which is designed to reduce the amounts of more than 60 selected radionuclides releasable levels — except for tritium, which officials say is safe for humans if consumed in small amounts.
Junichi Matsumoto, the corporate officer in charge of treated water management for TEPCO, pledged in a news conference last month to conduct careful sampling and analysis of the water to make sure its release is safely carried out in accordance with IAEA standards.
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32 Comments
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sakurasuki
Put blame on Tsunami? Why that plant and cooling system is designed and put in a way that can be impacted by Tsunami?
https://news.usc.edu/86362/fukushima-disaster-was-preventable-new-study-finds/
WA4TKG
Are they going paid W1000 an hour? Like the “protesters” at Camp Hansen/Schwab ?
Legrande
Where's Yoon and his wife to reassure Japan that it's ok?
englisc aspyrgend
Are these the usual rent-a-crowd or just the honest but ignorant? I suspect the usual emotional but uninformed reaction to anything with the word nuclear attached to it.
Andy
Do you really think a handful of Koreans will sway TEPCO and their corrupt Government cronies. The radioactive waste will be dumped regardless.
Mark
If and when DEAD sea life starts washing ashore including deformed fishes and other mammals only then we may fully understand the impact of this radioactive water, until then we may just have to sit, wait, and see but then it may be too late as usual.
nosuke
Late August tepco plans to release the delicious water and no one has the power to stop them. Your better safe eating Kikuchi fried rice
Larr Flint
Yesterday I went to Muji and they had fresh Fukushima peaches stand that you could try for free.
No Japanese person tried it, only unaware foreigners.
The release of water shouldn't even start.
Strangerland
I heard lots of Japanese people were eating them. You must not have been there long. Or did you stand there and happen to count?
Fighto!
Why aren't they protesting their own nation who have dumpd a lot more radioactive by products into the ocean than Japan over the past 10 years?
Pure hatred of Japan on show. Nothing more.
Kaowaiinekochanknaw
It's unfair for Koreans to have their water polluted by the mistakes and mismanagement of a massive, corrupt, Japanese energy company.
They have every right to protest.
The locals here should be protesting too imo. But it would be 'bad manners'
Harry_Gatto
Do you realise that (KR)W1000 per hour equates to just $0.75 or around JPY 100? In any case this has nothing to do with Okinawa so stay on topic or get off the pot.
Taking out the trash
Well said and other countries are doing the same including France, US among others. It is not about science. It is about hate of Japan.
Garthgoyle
It's good to stand against the release of any kind of radioactive material into nature.
But knowing South Koreans, none of those people care about the ambient, at all. They just want another excuse to say they hate Japan (due to their indoctrination of hate).
Fredrik
We call this democracy. Why so much anti-democracy comments on this article?
N. Knight
Mad considering they have no problem with China releasing more highly contaminated water as part of normal operations of their nuclear power plants.
Lunatic fringe populist followers whipped up to a frenzy.
Agent_Neo
Democracy? What they are doing is nothing more than simple nationality discrimination. Anti-Japan activities are a matter of course for racist Koreans, and it is not a problem to be solved now.
No matter how much contaminated water comes out of nuclear power plants in China or South Korea, no matter how much the concentration is higher than Japan, they cannot forgive only Japan. What they are doing is definitely discriminatory.
Koreans are the majority of the population who have been imprinted from childhood that Japan is evil in everything and Korea is absolute justice. This is the result of the so-called anti-Japanese education.
They don't listen to correct information about Japan, and only see what they want to believe and what they want to see.
There is no truth or scientific basis for it.
Richard Burgan
Another example of the fact that there are stupid people in every country. First, many people don't know what radiation is or where it comes from, and they surely don't know about radiation safety. These are not the people you should listen to. Secondly, the water that will be discharged will be diluted so much that you won't even be able to measure the radiation it emits. The "boogie man"s more dangerous than the water that will be released. South Koreans should be solving real problems like North Korea. Kim Jong Un is much more dangerous.
Christopher Mas Osan
Lot of angry Koreans over here. All I see is yellow. Its everywhere. Totally downplayed in the media.
The Yen reach is far. in Media quelling.
Those who read my comments know where I stand. Maybe I should join.
Roy Sophveason
I love how Koreans color-code their protests. Not just this one, seemingly all of them. It's almost like someone with a lot of money and a vested interest prints and distributes signs for the people to use. Who could that someone be?
Someone with a political interest maybe? Like a political party?
If, and that's a very big if, the "media" is being "quelled", don't you think the primary suspect would not be another country, but someone with a vested internal interest? Who could that someone be?
Someone with a political interest maybe? Like a political party?
Maybe. You just need to decide which side you're going to pawn yourself off to.
Agent_Neo
It seems that the Korean opposition parties are desperately carrying out anti-Japanese activities, criticizing the current government with the mass media and aiming to win votes, but it seems that they will not get much support from the public this time.
A series of anti-Japanese campaigns against treated water have also been launched by the Korean opposition party, but only a portion of the Korean public agrees, and other countries are watching quietly.
Opposing Japan's release means ignoring the scientific facts that the IAEA and other countries have done, and expressing opposition based on emotion.
Many Koreans who are crazy about traveling to Japan eat in Japan and drink water in Japan. Unfortunately, even if treated water is released from Fukushima, this movement will not stop.
All Koreans should stand together and oppose the discharge of treated water.
Why don't Koreans follow their emotions and intensify their anti-Japanese activities?
The ancestors of Koreans annexed by Japan would be outraged if they saw it.
Anti-Japan is still not enough for them.
Roy Sophveason
I'm confused as to the point you want to make. You say:
But two sentences later:
You seem to occupy both diametrical opposite sides of the argument at once.
Agent_Neo
What I'm saying is ironic.
I have absolutely no desire for friendship between Japan and South Korea, which is neither rational nor civilized.
It can be said that anti-Japanese anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea, which has been sublimated to anti-Japanese fundamentalism, is a disease that will never be cured unless the anti-Japanese historical education is overturned.
The cure for Korea is correct history, but it completely destroys their pride.
A good example is the Koreans who do not stop their anti-Japanese activities despite being presented with the scientific evidence provided by the IAEA and scientists from other countries. Koreans who only think of degrading Japan for emotional reasons, not for scientific reasons, are harmful to Japan.
It is in the national interest of Japan that the relationship between Japan and South Korea continues to cool down.
The countries of the world need to know more about what kind of country South Korea is.
Did you know that Boy Scouts from all over the world failed in South Korea?
There is a reason why it is said that the more you know about Japan, the more you hate it.
Roy Sophveason
Funny you should say that, because it is in the interest of another countriy that the relationship between Japan and South Korea sours. And that country is, surprise of surprises, China.
The Chosun Ilbo in a very recent article[1] informs us that China is using student organisations in Korea to spread disinformation about the Fukushima waste water release, to the point where these groups are now monitored by Korean counterintelligence.
Scientific evidence obviously does not mean much if you are dealing with a crowd that believes in and spreads "facts" like "the flora and fauna in Fukushima is abnormal", "the Japanese government is suppressing citizen's reports from Fukushima", and -- my personal favorite -- "Japan is refusing help with Fukushima because it is used to store 90 tons of weapons-grade plutonium". That is a level of reality distortion that, as we can see in some select western countries, cannot be remedied by the normative power of the factual world.
[1] https://www.chosunonline.com/site/data/html_dir/2023/08/10/2023081080139.html
Samit Basu
@Agent_Neo
Fukushima radioactive waste water release is a winning issue for the Democratic party that will help to extend their supermajority in the next election.
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/27/1184267924/japan-south-korea-fukushima-nuclear-wastewater
Agent_Neo
＠Roy Sophveason
Did you know that South Korea has unfortunately never been useful economically or militarily in recorded history?
It wasn't so long ago that former South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he would "share the dream with China."
By all means, I hope that you will choose the path of allying with China and being completely hostile to the United States and Japan.
＠Samit Basu
It looks like statistics from Japanese newspapers, but are there any statistics from Korean newspapers? too few people are against
I wonder why 100% of Koreans do not oppose the release of Japan's treated water. Isn't there enough anti-Japanese education?
I strongly hope that the current president will be removed from office as soon as possible and that Lee Jae-myung, who is currently in the opposition, will become president. President Moon Jae-in was half-heartedly anti-Japan, but the next president, Lee Jae-myung, should completely destroy Japan-Korea relations.
What is most necessary for South Korea is for it to once again share its dreams with China, and for South Korea to be firmly tied to China both economically and militarily.
If you are a Korean who has the right to vote, support Lee Jae-myung like I do! !
Samit Basu
@Agent_Neo
There are always traitors among general population, like Yoon.
Roy Sophveason
Aah, seems like we have attracted the attention of the online division of the DPK cheerleading squad.
Snuggles
Global consumers can speak loudly by refusing to buy these tainted products.
Luis David Yanez
The irrational anti nuclear hysterics are at it again.
These people obviously understand nothing about radiation or nuclear power, are probably illiterate in all scientific subjects, but somehow they trust their irrational fears that have basis on the depiction of radiation by the likes of Godzilla or The Simpsons more than the international nuclear power watchdog.
Also it becomes a great pretext to once again rally people against Japan, so there is also that.
WA4TKG
Yeah, I know Harry, but it fit Y1000 (Won) Y1000 (Yen), saying Y10,000 makes it look to the untrained eye, that they're being over paid ...lol.
OssanAmerica
President Yoon is a hero. A true South Korean patriot willing to risk his career on putting South Korea, a democracy, on the right path towards prosperity and security. The opposition parties and the forever J-hating crowd are the traitors working to hand South Korea over to North Korea and China.