Japan, after scallop exports to China blocked due to contaminated water discharge... expands exports to South Korea

The Japanese government has established a plan to export scallops, whose exports to China?the largest export market?have been blocked due to the discharge of contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (referred to by the Japanese government as "treated water") into the ocean, to South Korea and the European Union (EU), among other regions.

Kyodo News reported that on the 25th, the Japanese government held a ministerial meeting to expand agricultural, forestry, and fishery product exports and revised its implementation strategy to include this plan.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

The Japanese government maintained its scallop export target amount at 65.6 billion yen (approximately 600 billion KRW) for 2025 while establishing targets by country and region.

For South Korea, it set a target to export scallops worth 4.1 billion yen (approximately 37.5 billion KRW), which corresponds to 6.3% of the total export amount. The plan also includes exporting 4.5 billion yen worth to the EU, 2.4 billion yen to Thailand, and 0.5 billion yen to Vietnam.

According to the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, more than half of Japan's scallop exports as of last year came from China. However, China has imposed a complete ban on imports of Japanese seafood since August in response to the discharge of contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean.

South Korea has banned imports only of seafood caught in eight prefectures, including Fukushima, since September 2013.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.