Pyongyang, August 24 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK issued the following press statement on Thursday:

The sea, the origin of living things and common wealth of mankind, is facing a serious crisis of nuclear pollution.

The Japanese government decided on Tuesday to discharge nuclear-polluted water from the Fukushima Atomic Power Plant into the sea despite opposition and warning of the international community.

It is undeniable that the discharge into sea of polluted water containing large quantities of radioactive materials is an unethical act of destroying the geo-ecological environment and of threatening the existence of mankind.

Japan would well know about the disastrous consequences to be entailed by its dangerous discharge of nuclear-polluted water as it is the only country which suffered a nuclear attack and experienced a disaster on Bikini Island.

Japan is deceiving and mocking at the international community by claiming that the nuclear-polluted water has been filtered by the poly-nuclide clearing equipment to "clean water". But it has been scientifically verified that the "clean water" still contains a large amount of extremely dangerous radioactive nuclides including cesium, strontium and ruthenium as well as tritium.

This was acknowledged by the Tokyo Electricity Company, an operator of the Fukushima Atomic Power Plant, in September 2017.

In May last, cesium of 180 times the standard value was detected in the body of fishes caught in the waters off Fukushima Prefecture, sparking off great uproar of the international community.

It serves itself as a clear proof of the dangerousness and disastrous consequences of the nuclear-polluted water that Japan is impatient to pour it into the Pacific, despite the strong denunciation from the world people.

Experts are raising their concern while saying if the nuclear-polluted water is discharged into the coastal waters of strong stream off Fukushima, it will spill into the half of the Pacific in 50-odd days and, after a few years, spread to the seas of the whole world to cause great harm to humankind for thousands of years. This is not a trivial matter.

Insisting on its stingy calculation method that costs and labor are low, peculiar to it, Japan is going to doggedly discharge the nuclear-polluted water into the sea, in disregard of the strong protest and warning at home and abroad. It is an unethical crime of Japan which does not hesitate to impose a nuclear disaster upon mankind for its selfish purpose.

This is the double-dealing attitude of Japan which is trumpeting about "nuclear threat" from neighboring countries and advocating the "nuclear-free world".

The horrible discharge of nuclear-polluted water is by no means an issue to be tolerated as the U.S., a nuclear war criminal and the principal nuclear offender, and its vassal forces provide "guarantee".

The neighboring countries and the international community are now closely watching the impudent conduct of Japan to pollute the sea common to mankind with nuclides and the sinister behavior of the forces actively patronizing it.

Japan should immediately withdraw its decision on dangerous discharge of nuclear-polluted water seriously threatening the lives, safety and future of mankind.

Japan will be held wholly accountable for all the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by its unethical crime unsettled forever. -0-

www.kcna.kp (Juche112.8.24.)