Tag: Japan

It appears this was likely a major mistake by this restaurant in Japan, but the Korean couple that was poisoned by the bleach are claiming it was a hate crime:

The Korean government has requested Japanese authorities to conduct a swift and fair investigation into a case where a Korean national was served water containing bleach at a restaurant in Tokyo. 

“We contacted the local police station as soon as we were notified about the incident,” said an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, adding that the victim reported the case to the Korean Embassy in Tokyo on Sept. 6.

The official noted, “The Japanese police responded that they will do so, but refused to share details of the investigation at this stage.”

The official also said the ministry was informed that the restaurant’s operations were suspended for four days in relation to the incident.

On Aug. 31, a Korean woman surnamed Kang and her Japanese husband visited a high-end restaurant, famous for tempura, located in a department store in Tokyo’s Ginza. 

The couple was served two cups of drinking water upon their request, but after taking the first sip, Kang noticed a strange odor from the water.

“After the second sip, my throat began to hurt so bad I couldn’t even talk properly,” she said during an interview with local broadcaster JTBC, Monday.

She made complaints about the water immediately to the waitress and the manager, but they attempted to take the cup back without offering any explanation. Only after her husband strongly protested to the chef, the waitress admitted that the water was poured from a bottle of water containing bleach.

After showing symptoms of stomach pain and nausea, the victim was taken to a nearby hospital where she was diagnosed with acute food poisoning.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link where the couple is claiming this was a hate crime.

Long time Korea expert Victor Cha, who now teaches at Georgetown University, is a big advocate of trilateral cooperation between the U.S., South Korea, and Japan:

The three leaders agreed to “inaugurate a new era of trilateral partnership” to counter military threats from North Korea and “aggressive behavior” from China in the South China Sea, according to a joint statement at the time.

“As we embark together in this new era, our shared values will be our guide and a free and open Indo-Pacific, in which our half-billion people are safe and prosperous, will be our collective purpose,” the statement said.

Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force joined warships from the U.S. and South Korea in several military drills this year, including a ballistic missile defense exercise on Aug. 29 near Jeju Island, south of the Korean Peninsula.

The U.S., South Korea and Japan’s “institutionalization in the broader scope of cooperation really is unprecedented,” Cha said.

“It is transforming the U.S.-[South Korea] and U.S.-Japan alliances from being more than just private goods that provide exclusive benefits to allied partners, to also publicly benefit the world,” Cha added.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

This would be a very interesting summit if it ever happened. I wonder if they would do it if China said North Korea has to attend as well?:

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (L) and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida talk during a visit to the Raj Ghat memorial in New Delhi on Sept. 10, 2023. (Pool photo) (Yonhap)

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed Sunday to work toward realizing a trilateral summit with China, the presidential office said.

The two held talks on the margins of a Group of 20 summit in New Delhi, expressing their pleasure at meeting a total of six times since March, when Yoon traveled to Tokyo to mend bilateral relations badly frayed over historical disputes.

“The president said the two countries should continue active meetings in the second half of the year and smoothly implement the process to hold a South Korea-Japan-China summit,” the presidential office said in a press release. “Prime Minister Kishida said he would actively respond.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The opposition party and these protesters do not care about the saving the oceans, if they did they would be protesting the stopping of dumping of waste water from Korea’s nuclear plants as well. Better yet they need to protest hospitals that give out CT scans which is more dangerous than the waste water being released. This is all about politics and sliming the Yoon administration:

Korean public sentiment over Japan’s release of wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is deteriorating rapidly, with the opposition bloc spearheading protests on Tokyo’s “irresponsible behavior.”

Despite the worsening public sentiment, President Yoon Suk Yeol remains silent on the matter, having Prime Minister Han Duck-soo speak for the government on the matter. 

Reps. Woo Won-shik and Yang Yi Won-young of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), Rep. Kang Eun-mi from the minor opposition Justice Party and independent lawmaker Rep. Yang Jung-suk participated in a protest organized by Japan’s Social Democratic Party and a number of civic groups in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture. 

“This protest is not about a fight between Korea and Japan, it is about taking action to protect the ocean and the future generation,” DPK Rep. Woo Won-shik said during the protest. 

“The most appropriate way of recovering Japan’s reputation is an immediate stop of the release. Through solidarity between the two countries, Japanese people should fix the problems of the Fumio Kishida administration and Koreans should fix that of the Yoon administration.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Definitely not the best marketing strategy for the Oppenheimer movie in Japan:

Sachiko Ishikawa, a YouTube video blogger from Tokyo, talks about the “Barbenheimer” controversy in Japan against a backdrop of the fan poster on Aug. 9, 2023. (Sachiko Ishikawa/YouTube)

When “Barbie,” the live-action movie about a plastic doll, opened Friday in Japan, it did so without “Oppenheimer,” the rival film with which it shared a bill in the United States.

“Oppenheimer,” a biopic about the father of the atomic bomb, has no opening date in Japan, thus far, and Universal Studios has said nothing about the film coming to the only country targeted in anger with atomic weapons. 

“Barbie” arrived divorced from its trendy “Barbenheimer” partner, a phenomenon in July in the United States but a cultural faux pas in Japan. (…………..)

Warner Bros.’ official “Barbie” account on X, formerly known as Twitter, re-tweeted a fan-art poster showing Murphy’s Oppenheimer carrying Robbie as Barbie superimposed over a mushroom cloud.

“It’s going to be a summer to remember,” declared the tweet, since deleted.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The French Air Force is currently conducting training with their U.S. and Japanese counterparts during the Northern Edge exercise:

A French Rafale fighter prepares for takeoff at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, July 5, 2023. (Hannah Strobel/U.S. Air Force)

 The French air force trained alongside its American and Japanese counterparts across the Indo-Pacific recently even as the French president objected to NATO opening an office in Tokyo.

French President Emmanuel Macron has told NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg he opposes such a plan, Japan’s national broadcaster NHK reported Sunday.

The plan was revealed in May amid concern about Chinese aggression toward Taiwan with one defense expert suggesting Yokota Air Base, the home of U.S. Forces Japan in western Tokyo, as a likely site. 

However, an unidentified official at France’s presidential office told journalists Friday that articles of the NATO alliance specify its geographical scope, which is the North Atlantic, according to NHK.

Meanwhile, the French are training alongside U.S. and Japanese forces as part of Northern Edge, which began July 2 and wraps July 21, Air Force Lt. Col. Keegan Dale, commander of 13th Fighter Squadron, told Stars and Stripes by phone Friday. The squadron, from Misawa Air Base, Japan, was deployed to Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, south of Hiroshima, for the exercise.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

So when are the Korean leftists going to start protesting their own nuclear power plants that are releasing more becquerels of tritium per year than what the Fukushima plant is scheduled to release?:

The Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power say the concentration of tritium in the discharged water will be lowered to 1,500 becquerels per liter, using a unit that refers to the amount of ionizing radiation released from a radioactive element. Officials say the annual limit will be 22 trillion becquerels.

That figure is smaller than what many other nuclear facilities around the world routinely release into water or air. Grossi of the IAEA said the release of radionuclides into water “has a proven record.” He said China, South Korea, the U.S. and France were among the countries doing it.

A nuclear-fuel recycling facility in northwestern France discharged 10,000 trillion becquerels of tritium into the English Channel in 2021, according to operator Orano.

Orano’s spokesperson Gwénaël Thomas said in an email that tritium discharges from its facility “have no health impact,” because the radiation is a tiny fraction of natural radioactivity in France and tritium is a naturally occurring radioactive element.

A spokesman for Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, the leading operator of nuclear plants in South Korea, said the country’s discharges into water last year totaled about 214 trillion becquerels of tritium. He said that level was safe for the public.

Wall Street Journal

You can read more at the link, but it is pretty clear that if the Japanese stick to the IAEA approved plan, what they are doing is within international norms. This means much of these protests are more politically driven than any concern about the environment. It reminds me of the THAAD protests in South Korea where the activists were saying the radar was going to poison the agriculture around the area which was scientifically proven to be nonsense. However, these protesters are not going to let science ruin a good narrative.

The IAEA analysis supports the best of bad options on how to dispose of radioactive water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant:

Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), speaks about the results of the IAEA’s review of Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water stored at the Fukushima nuclear power station into the sea during a press conference in Tokyo on July 4, 2023. (Yonhap)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Tuesday Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water stored at the Fukushima nuclear power station into the sea is consistent with its safety standards.

After a two-year review, the U.N. nuclear watchdog also said that the discharges of the water treated by the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), the plant’s custom purification system, would have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.

The results of the review are likely to add new momentum to Japan’s push to start discharging the water from the plant — damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 – some time around this summer despite lingering opposition from neighboring countries, including South Korea and China.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The four remaining families say they don’t want to take the compensation unless it comes straight from the Japanese government:

Lawyer Lim Jae-sung, right, who represents some of the forced labor victims who sued Japanese companies for compensations for their forced labor, speaks with the press just outside the Foreign Ministry building in Seoul on Monday to protest the ministry’s decision to make public deposits of third-party compensation money that four out of 15 plaintiffs refused to accept. [YONHAP]

The Foreign Ministry will deposit at local courts compensation money for victims of wartime Japanese forced labor and their relatives who have so far refused to accept the government’s compensation scheme.  
   
Some of the money will also go to parties who have been unable to receive compensation due to personal circumstances.  
   
As of Monday, 11 out of 15 plaintiffs who sued Japanese companies for compensation of their forced labor during the 1910-45 Japanese annexation of Korea have received third-party compensation, mostly from Korean corporate donations.

For the remaining four plaintiffs, two of whom are surviving victims and the rest relatives of victims who had already passed away, the Foreign Ministry announced it was depositing the compensation money so that they could choose to take it from a local court close to where they live “whenever they wish.”  
   
“This decision was reached so that any of the plaintiffs who change their mind and decide to take on the compensation can do so at their leisure,” said a high-ranking Foreign Ministry official in speaking with the press in Seoul on Monday. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.