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Prime Minister Han Duck-soo delivers a message to the public regarding Japan’s release of contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean on Aug. 24. (Yonhap)

At 1:03 pm on Thursday, Aug. 24, the Japanese government began flushing radioactively contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the ocean.

History will remember this date as the day that the Japanese government ignored the concerns of its neighbors, its own citizens and fishers, and pushed ahead with the world’s longest-ever discharge of contaminated water from a nuclear meltdown.

The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), discharged 200-210 tons of contaminated water into the sea through a 10-meter-deep undersea tunnel that runs 1 kilometer offshore from the Fukushima plant.

As of now, there are 1.34 million metric tons of contaminated water, and it continues to be produced in large quantities every day. Dumping that amount of contaminated water into the sea for an inordinate amount of time is an environmental disaster that humanity has never faced.

While Japan insists that the release is “scientifically safe,” it is taking an irreversible risk for the entire human race and its future.

The contaminated water contains trace amounts of radioactive substances that are deadly to humans, such as cesium-137 and strontium-90, which are not found in normally operating nuclear power plants, and no scientific research can say for sure how those substances will affect the ecosystem if discharged into the ocean for more than 30 years.

TEPCO has also refused to allow South Korea and other related countries to take samples of the contaminated water to analyze changes in the concentration of radioactive substances.

A Japanese fishers organization stated on Thursday that its “position against the ocean release has not changed in the slightest,” and residents of Fukushima Prefecture who oppose the release said they will file a lawsuit on Sept. 8 to stop the discharge.

The Japanese government has set up a fund worth 80 billion yen (US$550 million) to compensate local fishers for their losses, saying that “the government will take full responsibility.”

However, neighboring countries such as South Korea and China, which have been severely affected by the discharge are not eligible for this assistance.

Why should neighboring countries spend copious sums to compensate fishers and take countermeasures when the responsibility lies with Japan?

Korea’s government is behaving in a preposterous manner. President Yoon Suk-yeol sat on his hands and released no statement on Thursday.

Instead, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo delivered a public address in which he called on the Japanese government to “disclose information transparently and responsibly over the next 30 years.” He failed to mention a key sentence in the original statement that he had released to the press: “It would have been best if the discharge never happened at all.”

Han went on to blame “propaganda and fake news” for adding to the plight of fishers, saying that “the livelihoods of fisheries are being threatened by unfounded propaganda that claims that the contaminated water from Fukushima will pollute our oceans.”

Under such circumstances, how are we to stop from asking ourselves who the Korean government is loyal to, when it defends Japan’s decision to discharge the contaminated water and places the blame on the Korean people?

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