Officials hook more Japanese fishery exports with false labels

By Choi Sung-jin

More Japanese fish and other seafood products with no, or false, origin labels have been on the dinner tables of Korean consumers, who had shied away from them since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, government officials said Friday.

Of the total 281 fishery products exposed with false origin marks, 41 were from Japan, said the National Fishery Product Quality Management Service. Also, 46 of 1,237 products with no labels of origin were Japanese.

The share of Japanese fishery products out of the total of such exposures rose sharply to 19 percent last year from 13 percent in 2014, it said. “Formerly, Koreans had a high preference for Japanese fishery products but consumers have shunned them since the nuclear meltdown of five years ago, making Japanese exporters disguise their products as Korean or attach no labels at all,” an official said.

Topping the list of exporters with false labels were the Chinese, who accounted for 39 percent of total violations, down 10 percentage points from 2014.

Since the Fukushima accident, Korea has imported more than 160,000 tons of Japanese fishery products, but not those caught in eight prefectures where there is radioactive contamination. Annual imports have declined from 30,000 tons in 2013 to 20,000 tons in 2014, according to customs authorities.

Koreans are still expressing considerable concern about Japanese fishery products. In a survey by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety last year, 85.9 percent of respondents said the Korean government should continue to “impose the current level of import restrictions even if it causes trade frictions with Japan.”