Jeffrey, Junghwan Oh
International media coverage: how has the media outside of Japan reacted to the disaster and its potential effects on the environment? What kinds of coverage seem most objective to you and why? What kinds seem to be particularly inaccurate, and why?
Most of media coverage that I heard about Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was from South Korean media. And my conclusion was that it was most likely that South Korean media tended to have rather different views on the issue of the disaster compared to other western media. These could be because first, due to deteriorating diplomatic relationship between the two countries and second, South Koreans tend to have negative views on Japan on most of the circumstances. I actually have encountered many interesting (distinctive) stories about Fukushima nuclear disaster that I have never seen from any of other international media. Some extreme Korean media have portrayed the whole issue as part of bigger theme called “도시괴담 / Japan’s city ghost story” claiming that their nuclear disaster would eventually lead to the fall of the entire nation. One of the stories was the one that came out from TV Chosun’s popular political show called Sseoljeon that was aired in March 2014. The show talked about how Japanese famous idol group member, Yamaguchi Tatsuya from TOKIO, instantly got a serious disease after participating in a campaign called “Lets support Northeast Japan by eating.” How the South Korean media portrayed this was very interesting. They portrayed Tatsuya as an ignorant person with useless patriotism who was miserably used by Japanese government. In the show, it said that Tatsuya has been enjoying eating agricultural product that came from Japan’s northeastern area for more than one year. Then, he was diagnosed with a radioactive disease that his body is currently at the status of full radioactive exposure. Interestingly, the Sseoljeon also criticized the “Lets support Northeast Japan by eating” campaign entirely by claiming that the Japanese government used this campaign to spread out false rumor in order to relieve their people with incorrect evidence.
Picture 1: http://tvdaily.asiae.co.kr/read.php3?aid=1395319435671212011
Article about Seoljjeon “Tatsuya’s medical condition”
I believe one of major problem of this Fukushima disaster is that nobody actually knows what is going to happen in the future. Although the show heavily criticized both Tatsuya and the campaign, Sseoljeon did not really come with concrete evidence of Tatsuya’s medical condition. It talked about Tatsuya’s possible symptoms, that his body immune system would rapidly decline and would have high chance of possibility for getting cancers. After watching the Sseoljeon show, the video that our class watched on last Friday’s class came to my mind. Farmer named, Matsumura Naoto who has decided to live within 15km range of TEPCO Fukushima power plant, claims to have no health problem although he is living in the danger area by eating the food that was cultivated from the central zone near Fukushima TEPCO plant. What I have seen from Matsumura’s condition was different from how the show described Tatsuya as an ignorant singer in grave danger. Both farmer Matsumura and Tatsuya could be used as some sort of favorable evidence for Japanese authority that northeastern area of Japan would not affect humanities with serious radioactive damage. This could also link to the discussion of the last class when we talked about Japan’s previous radioactive experiences in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. For both cases, there was no evidence of radioactive death that came out from the Fukushima danger range. Also for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we could not see serious radioactive related death issues that came out from further areas away from the two cities.
I believe another main reason that made Korean media react more seriously on the Fukushima issue than other western media could be Korea’s geographical proximity to Japan. In fact, Fukushima is only 1800 kilometers away from South Korea’s capital Seoul where more than 15 million people reside. Therefore, I have often encountered Korean media that observed possibility of Fukushima radioactivity coming to the Korean peninsula either through sea or radioactive rain. Wit these reasons, Korean media mostly focus on Fukushima TEPCO plant’s continued spills of contaminated water that could possibly go into Korea through the Korean Strait.
Video 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWZrxjodvK4
Arirang News (August 30 2013)
Title: “Radioactive Water from Fukushima could flow into Korea as early as next year”
Video above is English based Korean news channel, Arirang News that talks about the possibility of Fukushima radioactive water flowing into the Korean peninsula. From 37 seconds, it actually shows a simulation of possible flow of radioactive water that was created by a team of Korean and Chinese researchers. Another interesting part was that the news even discussed the possibility of radioactive water reaching into western Canada and the United States.
Video 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8zkymPozMo
Arirang News (November 16 2014)
Title: “Traces of Fukushima radiation detected off California coast”
The video above is also aired by the same Arirang news channel. It talks about traces of Fukushima radioactive water that was detected along the coast of California. The video reports that tiny amount of 1.4 cesium was noticed along the coast. Interesting part from this news was that I could not find many “American (western) media” that was serious in broadcasting an issue about radioactive water that would possibly flow to the American soil. Therefore, I felt this video sort of portrayed Korean media as little overreacting in the Fukushima crisis by bringing up with the issue that linked this crisis with other countries’ territories.
How western media portrayed Fukushima Daiichi disaster was little different from the Korean media. Although they also criticized lack of Japanese government’s control that led to this unfortunate disaster, what the western media focused on Fukushima was the issue of how Fukushima disaster “itself” is dangerous. For example, according to CNN video clip below that was released right after the disaster in April 2011, it mainly compares Fukushima with past Chernobyl crisis in USSR. The video also criticizes the Japanese authority by not clearly reporting their people what is going on in the plant. However more importantly, what I felt after watching this was that the American media tend to focus more on the situation in Japan and its people. (Focus on the pure magnitude of danger in Fukushima)
Video 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KQX_qNGgA4
CNN (April 12 2011)
“Fukushima as Bad as Chernobyl”
Video 4 starting from 2 min 33 seconds, it says that “on the Japanese side, they actually do not know the full story and have comprehensive monitoring system.” By constantly comparing with Chernobyl, the news gave objective and very straightforward view that mainly concentrate on the danger Fukushima crisis and the possible side effect.
Video 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhA6uh5UyAQ
Nuclear Health (U.S.) (March 30 2011)
“Radiation from Japan Disaster Reaches 14 US States EPA reports”
Similar to the Korean media, I actually could find out one video (video 5) from American media that talked about possible threat of Fukushima radioactivity disaster reaching the American soil. The coverage that was released by the NuclearHealth.org, and talks about how Fukushima radioactive particles could reach 14 American states. I felt this video contained great importance because how the video described this issue sounded much more serious than any previous American media. Maybe it could hear like that because their topic itself was the “Fukushima radioactivity coming in to the United States.” According to the video, it says that “there are small amount of radioactivity in the air of New York and Florida although the official claims the size very minor.” However, the content of this video itself, was little shocking because their topic (threat of Fukushima radioactive particle coming to American territory) could be described “little extreme” compared to other Fukushima related news that was aired from the American media.
To conclude, I looked at various international media (mostly Korean and American sources) that talked about Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster. I have found out that first of all, both Korean and American media reacted to the disaster very critically. In other words, I could not see any sign of “Japan’s Safety Myth” from the two media. Rather, they both criticized Japanese government’s inability in safely controlling Fukushima TEPCO power plant. More importantly, two international media both described Fukushima’s current situation highly dangerous that Fukushima is in fact, on the similar level of the past Chernobyl incident in 1986. It seemed like both countries (United States and Korea) were very serious in the possible radioactive effects into their territories. (Although CNN talked about this issue in much smaller scale than the Korean media.) For the American media, although many YouTube videos, talked about possible radioactive rain and water that might come into the American territory, they were not serious compare to how Korean media described the possibility of radioactive water coming to the Korean peninsula. Also, how the two different media portrayed Fukushima’s danger “itself” was slightly different. I felt the American media portrayed with more objective views in the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In the case of American media coverage, they not only portrayed the danger of Fukushima power plant to surrounding local areas , but they also really tried use this Fukushima incident (with the past example of Chernobyl) in order to bring the awareness of radioactive disaster in general.