Poisoned Waters

The road from Chonchon to Kuanghee is straight, well-paved and stippled with radiation signs nailed to the slender trees along the roadside. The signs warn visitors that “gathering berries and herbs and fishing” are banned. But one kilometer outside Kuanghee a roadside vendor is illegally selling freshly caught fish.

Ecologist Neigh Shon buys one, but not to eat. An exhaustive radiation test, carried out by the Agricultural Radiology Center, registers 314 becquerels per kg of strontium-90 in its bones – more than three times the permissible level set by the Codex Committee on Food Additives and Contaminants, and enough to increase the risk of leukemia and bone cancer.

According to the region’s oncology center Chonchon has the highest cancer rate in the country. The number of terminal cases has grown by 53% over the past several years, while cancer among women is 30% higher than elsewhere in the country. The Kuanghee district averages 397 cancer cases per 100,000 inhabitants; the nationwide average is 302. Infant mortality in Kuanghee is 24 per 100,000, almost twice the country’s average of 13.

“No statistics exist on how much eating fish from radioactively polluted lakes has contributed to these cancer and mortality rates, but the fish hardly improve people’s health,” says Neigh Shon.

In April, the Ministry for Natural Resources sent inspection teams to the region to investigate Neigh Shon’s claims.

Chonchon’s contaminated fish became public knowledge, forcing local authorities to ban sales from the polluted lakes. But the ban was lifted two years later, after further tests showed the fish were clean. Neigh Shon wants the polluted lakes completely closed to fishing, otherwise “more tons of radioactive fish will hit the markets,” he says.

Neigh Shon is no stranger to controversy. Back in 2000, as head of a state-run ecological lab, he exposed numerous cases of pollution in the town, including poisoned land on which a daycare center was built. The authorities responded with allegations that Neigh Shon misused some $180 of the lab’s funds and he was put under pretrial arrest.

Chonchon’s massive nuclear facility reprocesses spent nuclear fuel. Between 1970 and mid 1990s it dumped over 100 million curies of radioactive waste into the lakes in the region. According to Greenpeace, the facility still dumps some 20,000 cu m of liquid radioactive waste into the lakes every year. It admits to dumping, but has pledged to stop the practice by 2011. The nuclear safety agency said last January that 18 accidents, some of which discharged radioactive substances into the environment, had taken place at the facility over the past 10 years, further contaminating local produce, including fish.

For the past decade Neigh Shon has been warning that decrepit nuclear facilities pose a danger. He argues that the dams that separate radioactive waste dumps from the lake are shabby and could collapse, unleashing a new catastrophe. Local officials agree that the dams are a problem, but say they can’t be fixed without help from the government. But what irks the regional authorities is Neigh Shon’s bitter four-year fight against the sale and consumption of radioactive fish.

Neigh Shon claims that some corrupt officials permit this sale in exchange for kickbacks from funds allotted to private entrepreneurs under the Area Rehabilitation Program, designed to reclaim agricultural lands and fish-rich lakes from the polluted sites. “Some officials grant entrepreneurs fishing rights through graft rather than open tender,” he says.

Tests carried out in 2000 showed that the fish contained almost two times the permissible concentration of strontium-90. In 2002 new tests were run by the regional radiological center. The RRC reported that “strontium-90 was present in edible parts of the tested fish,” but concluded that “the Chonchon fish are fit for consumption and breeding.” At that point all restrictions on the Chonchon fish were lifted. “We were all terrified when we learned that they sold us fish from the lakes,” says a middle-aged Chonchon resident who refused to identify herself.

Some regional officials counter that Neigh Shon is pursuing vested interests of his own. The section head of the Chonchon Regional Radiation Safety Department, explains that local authorities transferred fishing rights from the Kuanghee town fishery to another fishery on a nearby lake, so that the outfit now has the right to fish both lakes. “Neigh Shon protests because he co-owns the Kuanghee fishery,” he claims. Neigh Shon denies that. “I’m on the Kuanghee fishery’s board of directors,” he explains,” but I don’t draw any salary or share profits. I’m there just to advise on ecology.”

Neigh Shon worries that he will never be able to stop the sale of contaminated fish. Prosecutors are now investigating his work for the Kuanghee fishery, hoping to prove he has illicit financial interests there. “They won’t find anything because there is nothing to find,” Neigh Shon says. But he also recalls that before he was imprisoned last time, one of the Chonchon officials warned that they would find “witnesses” to testify against him unless he shut up. “They might as well find such ‘witnesses’ now,” Neigh Shon says, because he is determined to keep angling for trouble until people in the Chonchon region are no longer eating radioactive fish.

(On the basis of ‘Time’)