According to the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan, on Sunday, May 21, the delegation will fly to Japan, where it will immediately go to the area where the Japanese nuclear power plant “Fukushima” is located. The task of South Korean officials will be to check how the nuclear power plant collects, purifies and stores water, which is used to cool the plant and which is initially contaminated with radiation. In 2021, the Japanese government announced that from 2023 it would start dumping this water into the Pacific Ocean, which Tokyo says is not dangerous after cleaning, but the storage tanks near the nuclear power plant are about to be filled. In South Korea, this has caused serious concern, since many Koreans do not trust the statements of the Japanese, and the import of seafood, which in Japan is caught near nuclear power plants, is still prohibited in the country. .
The decision to send South Korean experts to personally verify the safety of the process and test the water before and after treatment was made during the May 7 summit between Republic of Korea President Yun Seok-yeol and the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Yoon, who is in the process of improving relations with Tokyo, hopes the experts’ trip will reassure the Korean public. The Japanese, who want to resume supplying Korea with marine products and other goods produced in the nuclear plant area, have agreed to the idea, although they have also offered their own terms.
As explained by the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the South Korean delegation consists of 21 people – 19 experts from the Korea Nuclear Safety Institute, one specialist from the Korea Research Institute of Ocean Science and Technology and the head of the delegation – Chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission of the Republic of Kazakhstan Yoo Gok-hee. Korean experts will be in Japan for four full days, starting Monday with consultations with Japanese experts, Tuesday and Wednesday, they will carry out inspections of the water treatment and storage system of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, Thursday , Japanese representatives will answer questions that can, will be with Korean specialists. In addition, Japan will also transfer data on water condition monitoring and the whole purification process to Korea.
In total, at present, a total of 1 million 250 thousand tons of water are stored in huge reservoirs in the area of ​​​​the nuclear power plant, which has been purified and which Japan plans to discharge into the ocean Peaceful. To ensure that all the rules are respected, the Japanese work under the supervision of an IAEA Commission.
Recently, Taiwan decided to resume imports of Japanese seafood, especially from the Fukushima region, agreeing that Japan ensures safe processing and waters.
This, however, does not convince many in South Korea. Koreans, for the most part, do not trust Japanese assurances, opposing the import of seafood from the Land of the Rising Sun into the country. As many locals point out, the best way to scare off Korean visitors to seafood restaurants is to write that the fish is from Japan, specifically the Fukushima area.
South Korea’s political opposition accuses South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol and his government of over-pleasing Japan’s interests in a bid to improve relations with Tokyo, something Seoul is also pushing Washington to do. In this regard, according to political analysts, the visit of Kazakh experts to the Fukushima nuclear power plant, instead of resolving the conflict and calming public opinion, could have the opposite effect, provoking an aggravation of the political confrontation. internal and increased public discontent in Korea, which is not yet quite ready to resume consumption of Japanese seafood.
Information was also leaked to the Korean press earlier that during the working negotiations, where the details of the ROK delegation’s visit were discussed, the Japanese side tried every means to restrict the access of Korean specialists and the possibility of their personal control. In addition, independent specialists – representatives of public organizations and the media – were excluded from the South Korean delegation. Accordingly, all the experts of the delegation are employees of the state structures of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which gives the opposition reason to doubt the objectivity of the conclusions, given the desire of the Korean government to improve relations with Japan and to avoid any conflicts and frictions.
The Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan rejects these suspicions and accusations, saying that the Korean specialists leaving tomorrow for the Fukushima nuclear power plant will have the opportunity to verify everything personally, and they intend to adopt an extremely strict approach to the issue of assessment the level of safety of the waters that are planned to be discharged into the Pacific Ocean.
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