Showers on the Korean peninsula prompted some schools to close Thursday. Therefore, more than 130 elementary schools and kindergartens in Gyeonggi province surrounding the capital Seoul cancelled or cut classes after rain began falling on orders from the provincial education office.
Also schools in remote areas, where students have a long walk to class, were particularly encouraged to cancel activities. At schools which stayed open, teachers were advised to suspend outdoor activities.
A spokesman for the provincial education office, Cho Byung-lae, says all institutions there were asked to curtail outdoor activities, but it was left up to school principals to decide whether to cancel instruction. Furthermore, President Lee Myung-bak asked meanwhile for increased screening of imported food to check radiation levels. During a visit to the country's Food and Drug Administration, he said people here are bound to be worried because South Korea is so close to Japan. The crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant is 1,000 kilometers east of the Korean peninsula.
The amount of radioactive material contained in the rainfall is too tiny to pose any health threat, the prime minister's office said Thursday, calling for education offices to refrain from "making parents nervous".
The plant, on Japan's northeastern coast, was hit by the March 11 magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami. The nuclear plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, Thursday began pumping nitrogen into one of the most severely damaged reactors, hoping to prevent another explosion of hydrogen gas.
