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Contaminated water is currently being stored in roughly 1,000 tanks located at the Fukushima Daiichi site. (AP/Yonhap News)

In its decision to dump vast amounts of radioactively contaminated water into the ocean, Japan pointed to its history as a country that had suffered atomic bombings. Citing US support, it has attempted to push ahead with its plan without ever apologizing to its people and neighbors or taking responsibility for the historically horrendous disaster at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.

Its attitude shows that when it comes to Japan’s leaders, nothing has changed from their past attempts to shun responsibility for colonization and war — indeed, to erase the very memory of them.

“Why is this tragedy in human history repeating itself in Japan? Why do we keep seeing apocalyptic incidents like the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the unprecedented pollution in Minamata, or the explosion at the nuclear power plant?” former University of Tokyo professor Kang Sang-jung asks in his book “A Country Risen, a Public Abandoned.”

As a reason for this, he points to the modern Japanese state’s inability to let go of a “nationalist physiology that towers over a feeble society.”

“Wars and accidents are tragedies of different natures. If there is a commonality between the two, it is that we keep seeing the power elite concealing themselves behind the state, corporations, organizations and systems whenever one of them erupts,” he notes.

“They acquiesce and bow to the situation, claiming that ‘war cannot be avoided’ or that ‘we cannot abandon nuclear energy,’” he adds, asking, “How should we refer to this kind of ‘system of irresponsibility,’ where nobody answers for anything?”

Another important question needs to be asked: why did Japan decide now to go ahead with its plan for dumping the radioactive water?

The US and Japan reached an agreement ahead of time before a summit scheduled Friday between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. Shortly after Japan decided to discharge the water, the US government and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced their support.

Meanwhile, Japan has not provided any information or held any discussions with South Korea or China. They obviously foresaw the outcry from them.

This was good news for Japan’s strategists, who presumably concluded that with Seoul and Beijing uniting in opposition to Washington and Tokyo, that would only confirm apprehensions in the US that South Korea is tipping toward the Chinese side in its balancing act amid the US-China rivalry.

The US-Soviet Cold War in the wake of World War II worked out very well for Japan. It was able to easily sidestep responsibility for its war crimes while emerging as an economic juggernaut thanks to the Treaty of San Francisco — an agreement where South Korea had no say.

In contrast, the post-Cold War era was not good for Japan. Having emerged as a challenger to the US in the 1980s, it faced several lost decades after losing its upper hand in monetary and industry terms with the 1985 Plaza Accord and the 1986 US-Japan semiconductor agreement.

Today, the “new Cold War” between the US and China shapes a new global order. If Japan aims to have its way and minimize South Korea’s voice, then it works in its favor when there’s a growing sense in Washington that South Korea can’t be trusted because it’s “on China’s side.” Japan’s claim only gains more credence in the US the deeper South Korea falls into the “anti-Japan trap.”

What South Korea needs to make clear is that its opposition to Japan’s decision to dump the contaminated water and the lack of transparency in the process is not a matter of any conflict with Japan, but a serious environmental issue that the whole world should be grappling with.

The Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company set a frame where the focus is solely on the tritium. They argue that nuclear power plants worldwide are discharging contaminated water that contains tritium — including South Korea’s Wolseong Nuclear Power Plant — and that South Korea is being unscientific by taking issue only with contaminated water from Fukushima.

This frame delicately papers over the fact that the water from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, a facility that suffered a meltdown of its fuel rods, contains many other potentially lethal radioactive substances besides tritium, including strontium-90 and cesium-137.

TEPCO has said that it plans to lower these concentrations to below threshold levels before releasing the water, but it has not shared any precise information. It’s an issue that should be open for other parties besides the IAEA to examine, including the World Health Organization, international environmental groups, and experts in South Korea, China, Taiwan and other countries.

More importantly, we need solidarity with people around the world, including Japan. Over 70 percent of the Japanese public is opposed to releasing the contaminated water.

The people most directly vulnerable to damage are residents near Fukushima and Japanese fishers. When the people of South Korea and Japan work together to protect the oceans and the community’s future, we will also be able to move beyond the fictitious claims by Japanese right-wingers that South Korea is a “country that doesn’t keep its promises.”

The international community has been sharing growing concerns, with Greenpeace issuing a statement blasting the decision as “completely disregard[ing] the human rights and interests of the people in Fukushima, wider Japan and the Asia-Pacific region.”

A friend of mine in the US stressed, “You need to remember that just because the US government agreed to this, that doesn’t mean the American public did.”

“The whole world needs to work together to stop this,” they added.

By Park Min-hee, editorial writer

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]