On Monday, Yoon Suk, the President of South Korea ate seafood for lunch, his office said, to ease public worry over the safety of local fish products after Japan started releasing radioactive water from its Fukushima nuclear plant.
On Thursday, Japan began discharging water from the plant into the Pacific Ocean, flaring protests in Japan and neighboring nations. Chinese clients have been extremely upset, and China has declared a blanket ban on all sea products from Japan.
South Korean government said that it has seen no scientific or technical issues with the discharge, but the public crisis has increased over seafood and sea contamination.
Yoon Suk Yeol had a seafood lunch during his weekly meeting with Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, it said.
It added in a statement that the presidential office determined to supply Korean seafood products on the lunch menu at our cafeteria every day for a week beginning Monday, expecting our people to eat our safe seafood products without worries.
Japan’s environment ministry said on Sunday that trials of seawater near the Fukushima plant have not noticed any radioactivity.
Fishery industries, however, still worry about an intense drop in seafood consumption. Pollster Media Research’s July public survey, about 62 percent of South Koreans said they would trim back or halt eating seafood once the release goes on, despite government guarantees that it would closely observe the discharge.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Han said that bans on imports of Fukushima fishery and food products would remain in place until public worries were reduced.
