S. Korean lawmakers hold rally against Japan's nuclear-contaminated wastewater dumping

SEOUL, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- Lawmakers of South Korea's main opposition Democratic Party held an overnight rally against Japan's dumping of nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean.

The legislators gathered in the National Assembly building on Thursday night to participate in the protest rally that continued until Friday morning.

The participants shouted slogans of "The Japanese government must immediately stop dumping Fukushima nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean" and "The ocean of life and the ocean of everyone, let's protect it," urging the South Korean government to take actions against it.

Against the backdrop of a placard that read "Stop marine dumping of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated wastewater," Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party, denounced Tokyo for causing troubles to innocent people.

"Nuclear-contaminated wastewater is spreading in the Pacific Ocean. Something unprecedented in human history is happening. None of our fishermen and people have done anything wrong and been responsible, but the damage is ours," Lee said during the rally.

The Democratic Party has pushed for a set of bills to ban the import of all aquatic products feared to be exposed to the radioactive wastewater, including seafood from Fukushima and other regions.

Under the bills, the country-of-origin regulation would be strengthened to prevent processed food, made of seafood from Fukushima and other dangerous regions, from being distributed here, while recognizing radioactive wastewater damage as a fishing disaster to support the fishing industry.

The bills also sought to legislate the right to indemnity claims against the Japanese government by creating a fund first to support the affected, such as fishermen, merchants and those processing and distributing fishery products, and demanding reimbursement from the Japanese government later.

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

Japan started discharging the first batch of radioactive wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean on Aug. 24.