By You Soo-sun
The Ministry of Environment acknowledged Wednesday that a joint government response manual was lacking when venomous red fire ants were discovered in the southern port of Busan Sept. 28, the first of the species to be found in Korea.
Although the government has tentatively concluded that the fire ants have died, serious concerns are rising over the government’s capability to cope with the possible influx of harmful organisms in the future.
“A system for relevant government bodies to respond to red fire ants was nonexistent,” a ministry official said. “Red fire ants had never been discovered in the country, and so the Ministry of Environment did not have a manual of its own.”
According to the ministry’s report submitted to the National Assembly Environment and Labor Committee, Wednesday, a joint meeting was held Sept. 15, in which the Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, and Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs decided to form a collaborative response group and devise a response manual to address the possible inflow of fire ants.
But the discovery came before the action plan was prepared, causing the relevant government bodies to act inefficiently, conducting separate inspections and quarantine measures. On the second day of the discovery, the different government bodies held an emergency meeting to come up with a collaborative action plan.
While the ants were discovered for the first time in Korea, they were found in Japan in May, giving rise to the possibility of more infestations. The government is being criticized for having failed to come up with an adequate action plan in the meantime.
Furthermore, the government lacked adequate measures to address the situation. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, for example, has been managing the red fire ants under the Plant Protection Act as to protect the agriculture and forestry industries, but did not consider the ways in which the fire ants may harm people.
The Ministry of Environment did not include them in the list of species that may disturb the ecosystem or inflict harm. This is because under the current law, the ministry can only designate organisms confirmed to have entered the country.
The government plans to construct a collaborative inspection system to prevent harmful foreign organisms from coming into the country. It will also come up with a procedure for early action by experts and ministry officials.