“I recently bought 5kg of salt,” Lee Young-min, a 38-year-old mother of two children, said as she made seaweed soup in her kitchen in Seongnam, just south of the South Korean capital, Seoul.
She said she had never bought so much salt before but felt she had to do what she could to protect her family.
“As a mother raising two children, I can’t just sit back and do nothing. I want to feed them safely.”
The rush to stock up contributed to a nearly 27 per cent rise in the price of salt in South Korea in June from two months ago, though officials say the weather and lower production were also to blame.
In response, the government is releasing about 50 metric tonnes of salt a day from stocks, at a 20 per cent discount from market prices, until Jul 11, Vice Fisheries Minister Song Sang-keun said on Wednesday.
South Korean fisheries authorities say they will keep a close eye on salt farms for any rise in radioactivity. South Korea has banned seafood from the waters near Fukushima, on Japan’s east coast.
Source: CNA
