hankyoreh

Aug. 27. (provided by the Anti-Nuclear Power Struggle Committee)

By Park Soo-hyuk, Gangwon correspondent in Samcheok

What would have been the country’s first-ever resident referendum on inviting a nuclear power plant into a community was blocked recently by the central government and National Election Commission.

Residents of Samcheok, a city in Gangwon Province, now plan to form their own referendum body, with over 100 civic groups participating to sound out local opinions.

The Samcheok Election Commission responded to the calls for a referendum by declaring on Sept. 1 that the nuclear power plant was “state business, and therefore ineligible for resident voting.”

“Article 7 of the Residents’ Voting Act stipulates that ‘Matters under the authority or involving affairs of the State or another local government’ shall not be put to vote, and the Ministry of Security and Public Administration (MOSPA), which has authority to determine issues subject to referenda, sent a notice saying that this was state business and not eligible for a vote,” the commission said.

The commission’s decision had been pending after a special session on Aug. 26 where Samcheok City Council unanimously passed a motion submitted by the city for a referendum on whether to withdraw an application to invite the construction of a nuclear power plant in the area. Now a referendum according to the Residents’ Voting Act, which had originally been planned for early October, appears out of the question.

“We had hoped to see residents’ exact thoughts on this by holding a referendum, but the NEC, a constitutionally independent agency with the authority to make legal judgments and interpret the law, has yielded to the central government - which is the party behind the plant construction - and washed its hands of referendum duties,” said Mayor Kim Yang-ho, who was elected on an anti-nuclear platform.

The city attempted to push for the referendum after its own legal examination concluded that while the construction of nuclear power plants was indeed state business as MOSPA contended, the issue of applying or canceling applications to house nuclear power plants was a local government decision.

The county of Namhae in South Gyeongsang Province previously abandoned attempts to invite in a coal-fired power plant in Oct. 2012 after a similar referendum.

“This would have been the country’s first referendum asking residents to vote personally on how they viewed the application to invite nuclear power facilities,” said City Council chairperson Jeong Jin-gwon. “By rejecting the demand that the City Council passed unanimously, the NEC is preventing residents from exercising autonomy.”

The new plan for residents is to push for a referendum by setting up their own independent election commission, with over 100 civic and social groups coming together in mid-September for form what is tentatively being called the Pan-Citizen Alliance for Canceling Nuclear Power in Samcheok.

“In Buan County in North Jeolla Province, the community was in turmoil over a radioactive waste disposal site, and citizens ended up holding their own referendum in 2004 to block it successfully,” explained Choi Seung-cheol, one of the citizens behind the alliance. “If we can raise enough funds and find enough volunteers to take care of the costs, we should be able to hold our own referendum some time around mid-October.”

Lee Kwang-woo, head of planning and publicity for the Committee for Canceling the Samcheok Nuclear Power Plant, said the power plant plan was “based on a doctored list of signatures in favor submitted by the previous mayor, with 96.9% supposedly agreeing.”

“The central government is talking about how important ‘resident receptiveness’ is when constructing nuclear power plants, but then they block any kind of referendum,” Lee continued. “Once we’ve established a strong base of opposition with a privately led referendum, we plan to use that a basis to fight the construction plans.”

Samcheok residents previously held an anti-power plant campaign in the 1990s, with a large-scale rally staged on Aug. 29, 1993. Plans for construction of the Deoksan Nuclear Power Plant were eventually canceled in late 1998.

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