Govt. to strengthen radiation checks on Japanese food products

The South Korean government said Friday that it will strengthen safety checks on imported food from Japan for possible radiation.

The scale of radiation contamination checks on foods will be doubled starting later in the day, according to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

The products that will be subject to closer scrutiny by inspectors are those that have a record of being returned to sellers in the past five years after minute amounts of radiation were detected, the ministry said.

Products that will be checked include certain types of tea, blueberries, coffee as well as some food additives.

South Korea banned all seafood imports from eight Japanese prefectures near Fukushima in 2013 on concerns over their radiation levels in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown two years earlier. But no import restrictions have been put on processed foods from the areas. (Yonhap)