Negotiations on Korean visit to Fukushima offer little progress

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Negotiations on Korean visit to Fukushima offer little progress

Published: 14 May. 2023, 16:29 Updated: 14 May. 2023, 17:55

Negotiators from Korea, left, and Japan meet at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul on Friday to discuss details about an upcoming trip to Fukushima by a Korean delegation to inspect the defunct nuclear power plant. [NEWS1]

Korea and Japan will continue their negotiations to determine who will come from Korea to inspect the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant later this month and to what extent they will be allowed to inspect the plant and plans to release its wastewater into the ocean.

Following 12-hour negotiations that spanned from Friday to Saturday, the two countries agreed to adjourn and meet again in the near future to decide who can be part of an inspection team from Korea and what kinds of tests they will be allowed to conduct on the site.

The lengthy negotiations are an indication of the fierce wrangling between the two parties and ended without a detailed announcement on the specifics of the visit, other than that the Korean team would be granted four days to inspect the plant.

"Additional consultations will be held as soon as possible through video conferences between officials to finalize necessary matters related to the inspection group's visit to Japan," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement after the talks adjourned on Saturday.

Yun Hyun-soo, director-general for climate change, energy, environmental and scientific affairs at the Foreign Ministry, second from right, attends the negotiation with Japan on Friday. [YONHAP]

Korea’s side was represented by Yun Hyun-soo, director-general for climate change, energy, environmental and scientific affairs at the Foreign Ministry. Other members included officials from the Office for Government Policy Coordination, Nuclear Safety and Security Commission, Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries and Ministry of Science and ICT.

Japan’s side was led by Atsushi Kaifu, director general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Disarmament, Non-Proliferation and Science Department. Other members included Keiichi Yumoto, director general for nuclear accident disaster response in the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and officials from the Nuclear Regulation Authority and Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco).

Atsushi Kaifu, director general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Disarmament, Non-Proliferation and Science Department, second from left, are pictured during the negotiation with Korea in Seoul on Friday. [YONHAP]

The Korean negotiators were likely to have asked to get a closer look at the Advanced Liquid Processing System, which handles the treatment of contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

“This is something that the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] is not looking into specifically,” a Nuclear Safety and Security Commission official said in a press meeting before the negotiations on Friday.

A massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan on March 11, 2011, destroying the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Japan plans to gradually release tons of treated radioactive water from the defunct power plant into the sea — a plan that was announced in 2021 and has drawn strong opposition from fishing communities both at home and abroad.

File photo taken on Oct. 12, 2017 shows huge tanks that store contaminated radioactive wastewater at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Fukushima prefecture, Japan. [XINHUA/YONHAP]

The plant’s operator, Tepco, has said that all radioactive materials have been removed from the water except tritium, which experts say is not harmful to human health in small amounts.

The plan has been supported by the IAEA.

There are Korean experts who are part of the inspection team at the IAEA, but the additional visit from Korea was announced after a recent summit between President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Seoul.

The two leaders have been announcing reconciliatory gestures since spring, which seems to herald a hiatus to the years of worsening relations amid diplomatic spats on forced labor and other issues dating back to Japan’s 1910-45 colonization of Korea.

Yoon will meet with Kishida once more as part of a trilateral summit in Hiroshima, where the pair will be joined by U.S. President Joe Biden, on the sidelines of the Group of 7 summit from Friday to Sunday, the presidential office said on Sunday.

Although Korea was hoping to be able to send a some 20-person inspection team, to include not only officials but also scientists, it wasn’t immediately clear from Friday’s negotiation whether this would happen.

“Since this is a government-to-government, state-to-state issue, the Japanese side is still very negative about involving private experts,” an Office for Government Policy Coordination official said on Friday, also before the negotiations.

“We may be able to release the list of personnel who will be part of the inspection team some time next week after further discussions with Japan and a review by the Korean government.”

Members of Korean government bureaus speak with the press on Friday morning about the Korean propositions to Japan regarding its inspectional trip to Fukushima. [YONHAP]

Regardless of who ends up going on the trip, the Korean team won’t be collecting samples to analyze the safety of the wastewater, the official said.

“The IAEA is the body in charge of collecting samples and analyzing them, and Korea, as a member of the IAEA, has also been part of this analysis work,” the official added. “We’re not about to march in and try to conduct our own separate analysis — that would undermine the IAEA.”

The Korean government also dismissed the idea of scrapping its import ban on Japanese seafood from Fukushima and seven other prefectures, which has been in place since 2013 due to health and safety concerns.

“In addition to the scientific facts and analyses, the public has to be ready to accept such an idea,” the official said. “So until they are ready, this is not an idea that will be entertained, as the president has also made clear.”

The exact dates of the four-day visit to Fukushima will also be determined in future negotiations, according to the Foreign Ministry.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]