South Korea bans all fisheries products from Japan's Fukushima region

The South Korean government placed an import ban on all fisheries products from Japan's radiation-hit Fukushima and seven other adjacent prefectures, Yonhap News Agency reported Friday. The move comes as a widespread radiation scare in South Korea is leading to a sharp drop in the consumption of fisheries products. "The measure comes as our people's concerns are growing over the fact that hundreds of tons of radiation contaminated water are leaked daily from the site of Japan's nuclear accident in Fukushima," the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries said in a press release, according to the report. "The measure also comes as the government concluded that it is unclear how the incident in Japan will progress in the future and that the information the Japanese government has provided so far is not enough to predict future developments." Seoul had imposed an import ban on some Japanese fisheries products soon after an earthquake in March 2011 led to the meltdown of a nuclear reactor at the Fukushima plant. Last year, South Korea imported 5,000 tons of fishery products from the eight affected prefectures, out of a total of 40,000 tons of imports from Japan. The import ban was later expanded to include 50 products from Fukushima and seven other nearby prefectures. In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga urged South Korea to make a decision on a scientific basis. "Since the nuclear accident, we have adopted the world's stringent food safety standards and implemented strict inspections and controls on food exports under international standards," the top government spokesman told a press conference. Suga also said the water contamination affects only a very small area "We hope the South Korean government will respond based on scientific data." On Tuesday, the Japanese government decided to spend JPY 47 billion (USD 470 million) to deal with recent massive radioactive water leak at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, located 230 km northeast of Tokyo. The plant operator continues to struggle to keep the massive amount of radiation-tainted water from seeping out from the storage tank into the Pacific Ocean through drainage channels. The six-reactor complex was hit by a magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, which resulted in the world's worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.