S. Korea's opposition party denounces Japan's radioactive wastewater dumping plan

SEOUL, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's main opposition Democratic Party on Tuesday denounced Japan's plan to start dumping radioactive wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean later this week.

The Democratic Party said in a statement that Japan, which had been a war criminal country doing terrible damage in the past, came back as a country dumping nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean.

The party said each country sharing the Pacific Ocean will have to bear the brunt of unexpected damages from the discharge, stressing that Japan became a damage-causing country by waging invasion wars in the past and releasing radioactive wastewater now.

The Japanese government announced earlier in the day that it decided to start discharging the wastewater Thursday despite wide criticism from both home and abroad.

Hit by a massive earthquake and an ensuing tsunami in March 2011, the Fukushima power plant suffered meltdowns and generated a massive amount of water tainted with radioactive substances from cooling down the nuclear fuel.

The Democratic Party said the Japanese government chose the nuclear-contaminated wastewater discharge to "save costs," adding that Japan should take the entire responsibility for all situations coming from the release.