The ruling People Power Party (PPP) on Tuesday denounced a plan by opposition party lawmakers to visit Japan's Fukushima region over Tokyo's potential release of radioactive water, saying they are fanning "fake news" about seafood imports from the region.
A group of lawmakers from the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) plan to travel to Fukushima for three days starting Thursday to assess circumstances surrounding the water release and request information on the release plan.
The planned visit comes amid opposition suspicions that President Yoon Suk Yeol could have talked about resuming seafood imports from the region when he held a summit in Tokyo last month, after Japanese news reports said the issue came up during the talks.
Yoon's office has rejected such suspicions, saying Fukushima seafood will not come into South Korea.
"The president has never spoken a word about importing Fukushima seafood, but they keep saying that based on fake news from Japan," Rep. Joo Ho-young, floor leader of the PPP, said, adding that the opposition lawmakers' visit would end up publicizing the issue to Japan's benefit.
PPP Secretary General Lee Chul-gyu also said the opposition party is "attacking our government by taking groundless Japanese media reports as established facts," even as the presidential office has said several times that Fukushima seafood will not come into the country.
The DP, however, accused the government of taking no action against the potential release of contaminated water from Fukushima into the sea, saying the party decided to make the visit as the government is doing nothing about the issue.
"The Office for Government Policy Coordination, which is in charge of responding to the issue, has not put forward what it is going to do with contaminated water from the nuclear power plant," Rep. Wi Seong-gon, a DP lawmaker, said.
"And the foreign ministry, which is supposed to determine whether to take the issue to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and come up with diplomatic response to the issue, has no related plan."
Source: Yonhap News Agency