SEOUL, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) — Thousands of South Korean fishermen, activists and politicians held a protest rally in central Seoul on Saturday, condemning Japan’s dumping of nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean.
The individuals shouted “Immediately stop dumping radioactive wastewater into the ocean” and “Japan must store nuclear-contaminated wastewater on its soil,” urging the South Korean authorities to file a lawsuit with the International Tribunal in opposition to the Japanese authorities.
The rally got here after Japan began discharging the primary batch of radioactive wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy plant on Thursday.
“Even if fishermen catch blue crabs, merchants do not take them even after their price plunged by more than half. Wholesale marine products markets (in Seoul, Busan and other cities) are seeing business slack,” Kim Young-bok, a 63-year-old fisherman from the southwest coastal county of Yeonggwang, mentioned throughout the rally.
Kim mentioned Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who was committing crimes in opposition to humanity, ought to instantly cease the wastewater discharge that may convey disaster to all humankind world wide.
Standing beside his mom, an eight-year-old boy mentioned he couldn’t perceive why Japan dumped the wastewater into the ocean shared by different international locations, whereas a 10-year-old woman mentioned she couldn’t go for a swim within the sea because of the marine dumping.
“I feel very sorry for South Korean people because Japan, where I was born, dumped radioactive wastewater into the ocean,” mentioned Yuji Hosaka, a professor at Sejong University in Seoul.
Hosaka urged Tokyo to go for different approaches, similar to storing the wastewater in giant water tanks for greater than 100 years, which was proposed in 2017 however ignored by the Japanese authorities.
“If it’s safe and unproblematic, why would Japan not store (the wastewater) on its land but dump it into the Pacific Ocean, the well of the world, to worry everyone and damage everyone’s health?” mentioned Lee Jae-myung, chief of the primary opposition Democratic Party.
Lee referred to as the wastewater dumping a “provocation against humanity” and a “declaration of war” in opposition to all international locations across the Pacific Ocean, urging Tokyo to right away cease the discharge threatening the protection of individuals world wide.
Following the one-and-a-half-hour rally, the protesters marched about 5 km in downtown Seoul to the presidential workplace, holding leaflets printed with “Retract the dumping of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated wastewater.”
Struck by an enormous earthquake and an ensuing tsunami in March 2011, the Fukushima nuclear energy plant suffered core meltdowns. It generated an enormous quantity of water tainted with radioactive substances from cooling down the nuclear gas.