In response to the Japanese government advertisement appearing in Korean on YouTube stating that Fukushima nuclear power plant contaminated water is safe, the cyber diplomatic mission VANK launched a campaign to correct it.
The advertisement videos posted on YouTube by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs related to the Fukushima accident are 'Fukushima safety and recovery process' and 'Japan's response to ensure food safety'.
In the video of 'Safety and Restoration Process in Fukushima', the Japanese government said, "It is possible to work without a protective suit in 96% of the site. It is safe to discharge after diluting the purified contaminated water with seawater to lower the tritium concentration below the standard value." asserts.
This video was uploaded to YouTube on October 22, last year, and was introduced with Korean dubbing and subtitles, and has been viewed more than 580,000 times.
The video 'Japan's Response to Ensuring Food Safety' was uploaded to YouTube last month, and it has been viewed 2.8 million times.
Vank protested that this Korean advertisement was a problem for unilaterally promoting the Japanese government's position to an unspecified majority, and set out to correct it.
The corrective campaign is conducted by sending a letter of protest to Google and YouTube, which have approved Korean advertisements, and filing a global petition (bridgeasia.net).
The petition is titled 'YouTube should stop advertising Fukushima contaminated water safety'.
Park Ki-tae, head of Vank, criticized, "Currently, the general public has to watch advertisements in order to view YouTube videos, but advertisements are being unilaterally exposed to an unspecified number of people at random without the consent of the viewers."
He also said, "The safety of contaminated water and food from Fukushima are matters that cannot be agreed upon between Korea and Japan, so posting Korean promotional videos on YouTube should be stopped."
(Photo=provided by VANK, Yonhap News)