Dongmun Fish Market on Jeju Island remains quiet on Aug. 24, 2023, the day Japan begins to release treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Aug. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — Many fish markets in South Korea’s famous seaside cities remained all but empty Thursday while fishermen voiced fears for their livelihoods amid a drop in seafood consumption over Japan’s release of treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Japan on Thursday began discharging the radioactive water, which has been stored at the nuclear power plant since three nuclear reactors melted down in the wake of a powerful earthquake in March 2011, into the ocean.
The Fukushima plant was storing more than 1.3 million tons of water, and of them, 31,200 tons will be released by the end of March after being treated through a custom purification system known as the Advanced Liquid Processing System, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co. and news reports.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and the government have assured the release meets international safety standards, but seafood eaters and fishermen in South Korea remained wary about the potential impact on their health and businesses.
Jagalchi Market, the most well-known seafood marketplace in the southeastern port city of Busan, and the nearby Millak Raw Fish Town, famous for a cluster of sashimi restaurants, remained almost deserted Thursday.
Dongmun Fish Market on the southern island of Jeju also saw few customers.
“It used to be busy around 10 a.m. and between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. even when business was slow, but these days the market is nothing but an empty autobahn without visitors,” said a seafood merchant in his 50s who has been doing business in the Dongmun market for over 20 years.
“Business was better during the COVID-19 pandemic than now.”
A shopkeeper watches a TV report at a fishery market in Incheon, west of Seoul, on Aug. 24, 2023, that Japan started discharging contaminated water from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea the same day. (Yonhap)
Shim Myung-soo, a 58-year-old fisherman from the west coastal city of Gunsan, told Yonhap News Agency that he and many fellow fishermen are fearing for their livelihoods and survival due to plunging demand for seafood, especially ahead of Chuseok next month, the Korean harvest holiday when seafood and other consumption surges.
“I feel frustrated when thinking about going to the seafood auction tomorrow. Seafood consumption, I think, has shrunken by a quarter, and the prices may go even lower,” he said. “I don’t know how to go on anymore.”
He said he is freezing unsold fish as his seafood inventories grow and halting the operation of tanker trucks used to move live fish.
Fish prices have already taken a blow.
A crate of yellow tail, a species of jack fish popularly eaten raw or cooked, normally fetches 40,000 won (US$30.2) or 50,000 won at the Busan Cooperative Fish Market, which handles about 30 percent of the total seafood distribution nationwide.
On Wednesday, one crate was sold at less than half the normal price, while the prices of mackerel, a staple seafood species for Koreans, stood about 10 percent to 20 percent cheaper than usual.
A radioactivity test is conducted on seafood imported from Japan at Seoul’s Noryangjin Fisheries Wholesale Market on Aug. 23, 2023. (Yonhap)
The news of Japan’s radioactive water release also put merchants on edge in the runup to a gizzard shad festival scheduled to kick off next week at Busan’s Myeongji Market.
“I don’t know how fishermen and merchants can cope with the aftermath of the release. It had only begun to recover from the customer exodus in the past three years due to the pandemic,” said Cheon Dong-sik, in charge of organizing the seafood festival.
Regional governments are scrambling to mitigate the impact on the seafood industry.
The city government of Seoul plans to drastically expand its daily radioactivity sample tests to all kinds of seafood of any origin and release the results to the public.
The regional government of Gangwon Province also plans to expand its current twice-a-month radioactivity tests on seafood to be conducted on a daily basis, while Jeju Island increased the coverage of its regular radioactivity tests to about 200 seafood species from the previous 70.
The regional government of South Gyeongsang Province said it will livestream its radioactivity tests on YouTube and invite residents to oversee them.
(Yonhap)
