The great trek for justice

At the heart of the matter for Lee is the devastating and continued destruction of the ecosystems on which all of us — human and animals — depend. The Fukushima radioactive water dump is just one of the most recent examples.

March 30, 2025, by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/03/30/the-great-trek-for-justice/

Won-Young Lee has walked from his homeland in South Korea to Tokyo. Now he’s on the march in the US, writes Linda Pentz Gunter

How far would you walk for a cause? In the case of South Korean anti-nuclear activist, Won-Young Lee, that distance has no limit.

Lee, 67, and the director of the Korea Land Future Research Institute and the Public Reporting Center for the Dangers of Nuclear Power Plants (PRCDN), will arrive in Washington, DC on April 8, having walked there from the United Nations in New York City, a journey he began on March 19. The distance is about 260 miles.

His cause this time is to draw attention to the continued dumping of highly radioactive waste water from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan into the Pacific Ocean. This is not Mr. Lee’s first walk, but he chose the dates deliberately to span the time between the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster that began on March 11 and the April 26, 1986 Chornobyl reactor explosion in Ukraine.

This latest walk falls under the umbrella of what Lee has titled the “New Silk Road for Life and No-Nukes. Walking Planet Earth With Joy.” Together, the walks constitute a marathon that have taken Lee and other walkers through vast areas of the Asian continent, including Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, India and Nepal and on through Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia and through numerous countries in Europe. Lee himself has traversed 6,125 miles on foot.

He has been inspired, he says, by Gandhi’s ‘Salt March’ “that led to India’s independence,” and was also started, Lee says, “by a small number of people,” that grew into ever greater numbers.

That will of the people manifested again in 2023, during a trek of almost 1,000 miles undertaken by South Korean and Japanese citizens from Seoul, South Korea to Tokyo, Japan with stops that included one in Hiroshima.

Currently, as Lee marches resolutely from Manhattan to DC, he has encountered others who are equally inspired, often from Japan. Yoko Akashi, who marched with him in New Jersey, wrote that “even though we’re only two walking highways and shopping streets, people waved, honked cars and wanted to know more because they’re concerned.”

All of this is done with unbounded optimism. The purpose of the current walk is not only to engage with populations along the route but to try, once it reaches its destination in the nation’s capital, to convince members of Congress and even the White House, that the water dumping at Fukushima needs to stop.

“By marching, we can gain the support of citizens, get citizens to join the march, and as the procession gets longer, citizens can pressure politicians,” asserts Lee.

We have published numerous articles on our news site — Beyond Nuclear International — arguing against the dumping of at least 1.3 million tons of radioactive water from Fukushima into the Pacific, a procedure that will go on for years, even decades.

One of the more recent ones, by Tilman Ruff, sums up many of the arguments. Another earlier one from GENSUIKIN, also lays out the specific risks.

Lee’s organization has turned to the cartoon format to produce a booklet telling the story. It’s entitled STOP! Fukushima Nuclear Wastewater Dumping and can be downloaded from the PRCDN website in English here.

I met with Lee and a group of Korean activists on Capitol Hill in February, during a press conference led by Congressman Brad Sherman (CA-32), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to urge for the passage of his bipartisan legislation, the Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act.

The bill calls for swift and substantial diplomatic engagement in order to achieve a formal end to the Korean War – America’s longest war.

During the event, Lee expressed his hopes for a political change of policy over the dumping (I am afraid I did not share his optimism.) In a statement before his New York to Washington march began, Lee expressed the view that stopping the dumping was in the hands of the US president. “He is the only person to whom the Japanese prime minister bows his head,” Lee wrote. “If the US president asks the Japanese prime minister to stop, the dumping can be stopped.”

“Humanity has a responsibility to respect the survival of all living things in the ecosystem as well as its own future generations,” said a declaration put out before the latest walk launched. And yet, “the Japanese government is intentionally dumping potentially fatal nuclear contaminants into the sea.”

Both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations come in for deservedly harsh criticism as well. In the cartoon booklet, the IAEA is referred to as “Japan’s Brazen Enabler”. The UN, says the declaration, is “ignoring the spirit of the World Charter of Nature (1982), drawn up by themselves and the Earth Charter (2000), made by agreement at the Rio Environmental Conference, and are simply watching the destruction of our ecosystem.” Striking an uncharacteristically pessimistic note, it adds: “All of these things show that our international community is completely broken. At this rate, there is no hope for humanity.”

In conclusion, the march declaration offers the following:

The Japanese government, which has intentionally put humanity and the Earth’s ecosystem at great risk, must immediately stop dumping nuclear contaminated water and apologize to all living things on Earth.
The U.S. government and the IAEA, which support Japan’s ocean dumping of nuclear contaminated water, should immediately withdraw their support and seek safe measures for all living things on Earth.
The UN and the International Community must acknowledge and reflect on dereliction of their duty to stop Japan from dumping nuclear contaminated water into the ocean.
Global citizens, keep in mind that if we turn a blind eye to these errors, we are committing a crime to our descendants, and let us actively punish any country or power that intentionally commits such crimes.
Global citizens, let us be aware of our responsibility to protect the dignity of all life in the global village, and set the right guideposts.

Headline photo Won-Young Lee courtesy of the subject.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. Her forthcoming book, Hot Stories. Reflections from a Radioactive World, will be published later this year.