For Kori, for Busan, for Korea

(oil painting on wood panel,collage. 117×98cm × 3 pieces. 2018)

 

“ Cancer occupies 99 % of cause of death under 70 years old in this town.

Here is about 500 meters from the nuclear power plant.

I found out that this ratio was unusually high compared to other towns from the mayor’s standpoint.

I used to be the mayor of this town.

As the mayor I told the Korean government officials about this tendency years ago,

but they did not acknowledge the cause and the effect,

and they never compensated our residents.

There are no more than 20 percent of the residents who had lived in this town before the nuclear power plant came.

Once there were about 1,200 elementary school children,

but there are now only about 100.

Because of nuclear power plant,

economic development has been suppressed for defence reasons.

I told the government officials,

‘If you say nuclear power plants don’t affect your health, why don’t you build nuclear power plants in the capital Seoul?’

Then they said,

‘if problem occurs in it, the effect will be too big to our country, so it’s impossible.’

As for the demolition of the house,

it costs two million won on the far side of the river,

but this place where our family lives is five million won.

I want to move from this place too close to the nuclear power plant,

but we can’t.

The central government’s grants to the existence of nuclear power plants have almost stopped in the city of Gijang,

our town’s upper administrative district.

I was born in my hometown and I want to die in my hometown,

I think it’s normal human feelings.

But actually I want to leave this town.”

( A man who used to be Former mayor of Gilcheon in Gijang of Busan South Korea. February 2018. )

 

 

In 2018,

I was staying in Busan, South Korea.

I was invited to a group exhibition organized by Korean artists as an artist from Japan.

The theme of the exhibition named “Nuclear Dream 2” by Song Dam Hong,

a painter who represents Korean folk art,

was the nuclear power plant issue.

Seven successful artists in Korea participated into the exhibition.

I felt that I was regarded as a Japanese artist who experienced the nuclear accident in Fukushima.

The person who was keen to invite me was a female artist, JeongA Bang.

She was born near the beach in Busan, Korea’s second largest city, and she was successful as a painter.

There was an old nuclear plant about an hour’s drive from Busan.

Gori Nuclear Power plant.

 

Construction of the nuclear plant started in 1971, and several suspicious accidents have occurred.

In 2012, the oldest first plant was ordered to suspend operations by Korean government in 2012.

The cause of this order was the occurrence of a Level 2 accident in the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) in 2012 and its concealment.

Japan’s nuclear accident initially caused a sense of crisis among South Korean people too, and this was behind the suspension order.

However,

as several years had passed since 2011,

the sense of crisis among Korean people got weakened.

 

South Korea has not experienced a big earthquake for quite a while.

Among the people who cooperated in the exhibition there was a researcher of seismology at a university in Seoul.

He told me a lot.

Just as Japanese researchers did in this field, he said, Korean researchers, including him, also tried to find descriptions about earth quakes in Korea’s existing old documents.

As a result, he said, no description of a major earthquake could be found.

 

1 in 2017 (magnitude 5.4)

2 in 2016 (magnitude 5.0, 5.8)

1 in 2014 (magnitude 5.1)

1 in 2004 (magnitude 5.2)

1 in 2003 (magnitude 5.0)

1 in 1980 (magnitude 5.3)

2 in 1978 (Magnitude 5.2, 5.0)

This is the number of earthquakes with a magnitude 5 or higher between 1978 and 2017,

from 1978 Korean Meteorological Agency began observing earthquakes.

In almost 40 years, a total of nine relatively large earthquakes have occurred.

The biggest earthquake in their history was Gyeongju earthquake in the southeast on Sept. 12, 2016, which had a magnitude 5.8.

Based on the statistics of the Japan Meteorological Agency for reference, the following is Japanese environment.

 

7 in 2017 (maximum magnitude 5.9 off Fukushima)

23 in 2016 (Maximum Magnitude 7.3 Kumamoto District)

10 in 2015 (maximum magnitude 8.5 off west Ogasawara Islands)

8 in 2014 (maximum magnitude 6.7 in northern Nagano Prefecture)

11 in 2013 (maximum magnitude 6.5 near Awaji Island)

16 in 2012 (maximum magnitude 7.3 off Sanriku)

 

85 times in 5 years.

It’s too much to go back to until 1978 and to write the details for each cases.

It is quite natural for Korean experts to think that Korean society is built on the stable ground comparing to Japan.

 

As of 2011,

it was recognized that the Great East Japan Earthquake was a fire on the other side of the river for them.

However,

since 2014, earthquakes with a magnitude 5 around have started to occur with a slight interval,

and while the sense of danger against earth quakes decreased among general people,

this had brought some sense of anxiety to experts.

It was the same with the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Only small minority had anxiety.

Only few people were concerned and warned about what was happening at the nuclear power plants in depopulated areas

and what had happened in the towns around them.

But most people didn’t pay attention to it.

But once an accident occurs,

all of those people will be involved in disaster.

The towns where these people live are forbidden to live and turned into dilapidated place surrounded by radioactive wastes.

Fukushima’s accident changed towns located within 30 kilo meters from the nuclear power plant no-entry and no-living zone temporarily.

If an accident will occur,

her hometown of Busan can become deserted too.

 

 

The oldest reactor at Gori nuclear power plant was built in 1971,

it was before Korean Meteorological Agency began observing earthquakes.

For this reason,

the subsequent reactors were built in the same location,

“because there has been already nuclear power plants in that location.”

About 30 kilo meters away,

the second largest city in South Korea.

A female painter who was keen to invite me told me that she watched an exhibition of a Japanese photographer in Busan last year.

At an artist talk held at the exhibition,

the Japanese photographer repeated that Fukushima was recovering from the accident six years after the accident.

 

“He is lying!”

 

When she heard this, she said angrily to an acquaintance who planned this exhibition.

What she wanted to know was realities of the disaster caused by the Fukushima nuclear accident,

and what could happen if an accident occurred at a nuclear plant near Busan.

Indeed, what I was expressing was a serious situations that were progressing behind the scenes of reconstruction.

 

With the help of her and other artists, I stayed in Busan for about three months and ended up drawing paintings.

The important thing for me was to go to a town near the nuclear power plant.

Fortunately,

a TV station in Busan KBS Busan cooperated with me and a female interpreter helped me.

With her help, I could listen to the people lived around the place.

 

 

I asked an interpreter to translate all the signs boards that I could see into Japanese.

Then I found a facility for the elderly people.

It was a place for people who had lived in this area for a long time.

Also fortunately there was an elderly man at the entrance.

Greeting him and I asked him.

 

“I’m a tourist from Japan and occasionally came to this town. This is my first visit, could you tell me about what kind of city is here?”

 

I introduced myself using such a lie and asked a question.

It was a method I used in Fukushima too.

 

“This is the town of nuclear power. I am pretty worrying about nuclear power plants.”

 

He was a man who moved to the town as a civil engineering worker to build nuclear power plants in the 1980’s.

At the facility,

I was able to meet a man who was a former mayor and I could listen to his story.

What he told me was the first words I introduced in this text.

He had lived in this town for eight generations.

There used to be others, but most of them sold their land and moved to other places after the nuclear power plants came.

There are some children, but it has become usual case that they drive children to elementary school in big city.

There was no tall building around there.

For defence reasons,

Korean government has adopted a policy of not creating a place from which people can look at nuclear power plants from high altitudes and

they has banned the construction of commercial facilities that attract people.

 

( It’s like a town of winter. )

 

I felt.

 

Before the arrival of the nuclear power plant, he said, this place used to be a beach.

I asked him whether could he give me old photos of his family to me, then he responded.

So I was able to get some photo data.

These were pictures of his father, mother, grandfather,grandmother in traditional Korean clothing and

inhabitants used to live here when he was child.

I found pictures of local women standing side by side at the beach.

But they had not been probably in this place.

They all ran away to warm place.

 

In this sense,

I described him and those who fled to bright warm cities with butterfly wings.

Also I depicted the spirits of his ancestors from his pictures as if they were showing the town’s old shape which used to be.

When this painting was completed, I carried it into the town of Busan.

I placed it in a subway train and took it to the beach where the rich people lives.

I installed this painting on the beach without permission like Japan.

 

Many came to my paintings and I talked with.

But none of them didn’t know about what I listened from former mayor, what was happening in the not-so- far part of them.

Once they knew, they got surprised.

 

Though if an accident had occurred this place would have been deserted.

 

( text : Akira Tsuboi )