National Agenda : An Atom of Difference : South Korea’s aggressive expansion of nuclear power faces growing opposition from farmers and fishermen.

Park Bong Sung, 57, represents the fifth generation of his family to farm a small plot of land in this rural area of southwest South Korea--and maybe the last.

A nuclear power site that now holds two plants, with two more under construction, started operations a mile away six years ago. And since then, Park has had trouble selling his crops of rice and red peppers.

A map of radiation readings at a visitors’ center at the nuclear site showed that Seoul and Pusan, the nation’s two largest cities, had more radiation in the air on one day recently than the area around Park’s farm. But people throughout the country have come to believe that the power plants have made farm crops unsafe to eat.

“When you sell your harvest, you can’t let the distributors know you are from Yonggwang,” Park said.

Also, the value of Park’s farm and home have plummeted, and he complains that he can’t find a buyer--at any price. So bleak is the future that all six of his children have left home, several abandoning a high school education in the process.

“They don’t want to live here. But with the nuclear plants, what can I say to persuade them to stay?” Park said.

A decade ago, when Park learned that the nuclear plants were to be located nearby, he knew nothing about atomic energy and, like his neighbors, made no protest. Authoritarian governments that ruled South Korea in those days simply picked the sites and built the plants.

But now all of that has changed--and promoters of what is shaping up as one of the world’s most aggressive nuclear power expansion programs face a growing anti-nuclear movement here.

South Korea, which already ranks as the world’s eighth-largest producer of nuclear power, has announced plans to nearly double its nuclear capacity. In the process, it could move to the forefront of nuclear generating technology.

Indeed, said one U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be named, Americans could be forced to turn to South Korea--and neighboring Japan, where nuclear energy also is being pushed aggressively--for help if and when the United States starts building nuclear plants again. (No new nuclear plants have been ordered in the United States for the last 14 years.)

Officials of South Korea’s Energy Ministry say that a lack of domestic energy resources is behind their plans to add 11 more nuclear plants in the next 14 years to the nine existing facilities and the seven under construction.

But farmers and fishermen who have heard of the experiences of people like Park are no longer placidly accepting the decisions made in Seoul. When the Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) announced nine possible locations for the new plants earlier this year, protests broke out at each site. And when KEPCO said it was considering construction of a nuclear waste storage facility on Anmyon Island, 16,000 of the 30,000 farmers and fishermen who live there burned automobiles and destroyed a police station in protest.

“Only after the Chernobyl incident in the Soviet Union in 1986 did people start thinking about the problems of nuclear plants,” complained Jun Young Taik, assistant director of the Energy Ministry’s nuclear power division.

A year later, the crumbling of authoritarian rule in South Korea gave them the freedom to speak out. And now a fledgling environmental movement has planted the seeds of trouble for nuclear development.

“If (the late President) Park Chung Hee . . . and authoritarian government were still here, the nuclear power plants would go where the technical people thought they ought to go--and the same for the nuclear waste sites,” said one Western diplomat, who asked not to be identified.

Kim Jong Sok, head of KEPCO’s nuclear power generation department, attributed the new troubles “30% to Chernobyl and 70% to democracy.”

So far, the government has minimized objections by building multiple plants on four power sites, all selected a decade or more ago. But for the newly planned plants, “about three new sites” will have to be selected by 1993 or 1994, the Energy Ministry’s Jun said. And that’s when the big problems are expected.

“We do expect more trouble,” Jun admitted. “The NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) mentality has become a serious problem.”

The government and KEPCO, South Korea’s sole power company, argue that nuclear is the only energy source that can offer Korea ultimate self-reliance.

“Obtaining and securing energy supplies is not only a matter of economic growth but of survival,” Jun said. Pollution caused by conventional oil and coal power plants, he added, also is forcing the nation to turn to nuclear power.

On the other side are people like Chang Ju Sun, 35, a teacher who was fired by the government for attempting to organize a union and who is now an anti-nuclear activist here. “Korean nuclear facilities are classified as secret projects. The people are cut off from information,” Chang charged.

Chang, who has a wife and two sons, 5 and 2, has collected the protests of farmers like Park and pressed KEPCO--unsuccessfully--to buy out their land and pay expenses for them to move elsewhere. He also has organized demonstrations against the Yonggwang plants. “When an occasion presents itself, we can mobilize hundreds,” he says.

Meanwhile, KEPCO has become more sensitive to local complaints.

In 1989, a law for supporting communities around power plants was enacted requiring KEPCO to set aside about 1 billion won ($1.3 million) for subsidies to communities within a 5-kilometer (3.1-mile) radius of its four nuclear sites. Starting next year, the subsidy is to be doubled. For the 15,000 people who live close to Yonggwang, that will work out to $180 apiece.

The only direct payments made to residents are for scholarships for their children. The rest is spent on such items as community halls, new town and county office buildings and roads.

The power company has also started buying rice, seaweed and fish from farmers and fishermen near its nuclear plants.

Luxurious exhibitions explaining how nuclear power works also have been built at each plant site--and 439,000 visitors were welcomed to them last year.

Demand for electricity has been running so dangerously close to South Korea’s capacity to produce it that the government banned the use of air conditioners in government offices last summer. For years, the government has required that every other ceiling light in offices be turned off and different elevators be run to different floors in buildings.

Electricity consumption soared by an average of 14% a year between 1989 and 1992--and is expected to nearly triple by 2006.

“That is why we decided to build so many new plants,” Jun said.

Even with 27 nuclear plants in operation, South Korea would rely upon nuclear power for about 40% of its electrical-generating capacity, compared with 32.6% now, the Energy Ministry official added.

As if to show it means business, South Korea recently committed itself to a $2.6-billion nuclear research program over the next 10 years.

“It’s an ambitious program” that includes studies of advanced reactors, nuclear waste and a fast-breeder reactor program, the Western diplomat said.

Although the United States stepped in to squelch plans of the late President Park to build nuclear weapons in the late 1970s, South Koreans today “are not playing in that sandbox,” said a U.S. diplomat. “They are pursuing a nuclear program legitimately, and we are closely involved.”

So far, most of the technology has come from the United States, with Canada, France and Germany each getting a piece of the action.

But now, the U.S. diplomat noted, the South Koreans “are developing new techniques to build nuclear plants and developing technology skills that we are losing in the United States. Our people are getting old and we’re not churning out new engineers. At some point, we may be looking at the Japanese and the Koreans to help us build nuclear plants in the United States.”

Since South Korea’s first nuclear power plant came on line in 1978, no incidents of accidental radiation leakage have been reported. Operating ratios also rank among the world’s best. Since 1989, the nation has run all of its nine plants for more than 75% of the time--above Japan’s 71.7% and the United States’ 69.3%.

But South Korea is pushing ahead with no ultimate solution as to what it is going to do with its nuclear waste.

The Energy Ministry’s Jun said that delays already have put out of reach the government’s 1997 target date for building a storage facility for spent fuel. “We are more worried about a waste site than the new plants,” he said.

Then, too, there is a pending final step in the process of democratizing South Korea. Although outgoing President Roh Tae Woo carried out local assembly elections, he reneged on a promise to elect governors, mayors, and village chiefs. They are still appointed by the central government.

With all of the candidates in the scheduled Dec. 18 presidential election pledging to hold the postponed local elections, farmers like Park Jong Yong, 41, say they hope they will find a more receptive ear for their complaints from future leaders.

The World’s Leading Nuclear Power Countries

(as of June 1, 1991)

Country Plants in Operation Total or Under Construction Capacity (kilowatts) 1. United States 121 116,915,000 2. former Soviet Union 86 74,392,000 3. France 65 71,463,000 4. Japan 55 48,353,000 5. Germany 30 30,446,000 6. England 41 19,378,000 7. Canada 22 16,659,000 8. SOUTH KOREA 14 12,315,000 9. Spain 14 12,202,000 10. Brazil 9 11,387,000 11. Sweden 12 10,172,000 12. Taiwan 10 9,144,000 13. Czechoslovakia 14 7,204,000

Source: Japan Atomic Power Industrial Council