South Korea blasts Japan for radioactive water leak cover-up at Fukushima
Government minister delivers scathing condemnation.
Yoon Jin-sook, South Korea’s minister of oceans and fisheries, described Japan as a country without conscience or morality for first downplaying then attempting to cover-up the radioactive water leaks for so long before eventually admitting them.
“We did not know that Japan would let the contaminated water leak. We thought this cannot be allowed while our people’s fears were growing,” she said.
Her ministry has placed an import ban on all fishery products from eight Japanese prefectures near the site of the Fukushima nuclear plant. She had reportedly said that Japanese fishery products tested safe, however.
The Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 21011 caused major meltdowns in the reactors of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, causing the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), operator of the Fukushima plant, had recently reversed its denials and admitted that after two and a half years since the earthquake, the plant is leaking hundreds of metric tons of radioactive water daily into the Pacific Ocean.