South Korea concerned over food safety at Olympics with events slated for Fukushima

South Korea is considering making its own arrangements to feed its athletes at next year’s Tokyo Olympics, citing concerns over the safety of food from Fukushima, media reports said.

In addition, South Korean sports authorities have requested that international groups be permitted to monitor radiation levels during the 2020 Games.

Food safety concerns in South Korea have grown since Fukushima city was chosen to host six softball games and one baseball game next summer. Fukushima prefecture will also be the location for the start of the domestic leg of the Olympic torch relay, beginning next March.

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Tokyo Olympics organisers said South Korea’s National Olympic Committee had sent a letter expressing concern at the possibility of produce grown in Fukushima prefecture being served to athletes in the Olympic village.

“Nothing is more important than safety. We will seek consultations with the International Olympic Committee and others to secure our athletes’ safety and ensure that the Tokyo Olympics will be held in a safe environment,” the South Korean sports minister, Park Yang-woo, said this week, according to Yonhap news agency.

Seoul’s concerns come amid an escalating dispute with Tokyo over South Korean court rulings ordering Japanese companies to compensate Koreans who were forced to work in Japanese factories and mines before and during the second world war, when the Korean peninsula was a Japanese colony.

The dispute has affected trade and cultural exchanges, while figures released this week show that the number of South Korean tourists visiting Japan fell by 7.6% year on year last month – its lowest level for almost a year – according to the Japan National Tourism Organisation.

Bloomberg reported that the Korea Sport and Olympic Committee is to request international organisations such as Greenpeace be allowed to monitor radiation levels at Olympic venues.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be 32nd summer Olmypics, and the second time the city has hosted the event. The 1964 Olympics were also in the Japanese capital. The city was selected as host in 2013.

The games last 24 July-9 August 2020, and are expected to feature over 11,000 athletes representing 206 nations.

The main venue for the opening and closing ceremonies and the athletics will be the New National Stadium, which is also hosting the final of the 2019 Rugby World Cup. There are over 40 venues in total, and some of the football matches will be played in Yokohama, Saitama, Sendai, Kashima and Sapporo.

Tokyo will see new sports and disciplines feature in the Olympics, including 3x3 basketball, freestyle BMX, Madison cycling, karate, sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding. Baseball and softball return to the Olympic programme. No sports have been dropped from the 2016 programme, meaning Tokyo will be offering the most medals of any Olympics to date.

The torch relay to light the Olympic flame will begin in Fukushima in March 2020.

The 2020 Summer Paralympics will also be held in Tokyo, from 25 August to 6 September 2020.

Committee officials have also drawn up plans to open a separate cafeteria exclusively for South Korean athletes to ensure that they are not served food from the region affected by radioactive fallout from the March 2011 meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The official threshold for radioactive substances in food from Fukushima is much lower than those in other parts of the world, including the European Union and the US.

All food items produced in Fukushima undergo repeated inspections to ensure their safety, according to the prefectural government.

“We are only shipping primary products which are certified to be safe through multiple inspections in each stage with cooperation among municipal and prefectural government, production areas, producers, distributors and retailers,” it says on its website.

Data from the NGO monitoring group Safecast shows that atmospheric radiation levels in Tokyo are lower than those in many other cities.

On Thursday morning, Safecast data showed levels in the Roppongi district of Tokyo stood at 0.084 microsieverts per hour, compared with 0.116 in Suwon, south of Seoul. In Fukushima city, located 45 miles west of the stricken nuclear power plant, atmospheric radiation was recorded at 0.100 microsieverts per hour.

The global average of naturally occurring background radiation is 0.17-0.39 microsieverts per hour, according to the pro-nuclear lobby group the World Nuclear Association.