Before Talking About New Nuclear Plants, Answer Naa-ri’s 12-Year Question

For 12 years, residents of Naa-ri in Gyeongju have kept a protest tent outside the Wolsong nuclear complex, asking for the chance to move somewhere they consider safe. Every Monday, they have pulled funeral biers bearing their own names in front of the plant.

The government has never been unaware of their demands. Moon Jae-in visited Wolsong before becoming president, and Kim Seong-hwan, now climate and energy minister, met residents while serving as a lawmaker. Politicians introduced bills to support relocation several times. Yet the residents’ lives did not change. In 2024, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power responded with a lawsuit seeking to remove the protest camp, forcing residents to leave the place they had occupied for more than a decade.

The case raises questions about the reach of South Korea’s Nuclear Safety Act. The restricted zone around Wolsong reactors 1 through 4 extends 914 meters from the reactor. Authorities can limit public access and residence within it, with compensation provisions for resulting losses. Naa-ri lies directly beside that boundary. Residents have repeatedly had tritium detected in their urine, while people living near nuclear plants have pursued lawsuits over alleged health problems, including thyroid cancer. The causal relationship remains disputed, but residents have also faced falling property values, changes to their community and the inability to leave even when they wanted to.

The article contrasts that unresolved local reality with the government’s nuclear expansion. Earlier this year, it finalized two new reactors included in the previous administration’s 11th Basic Plan for Electricity Supply and Demand. In June, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power selected Yeongdeok in North Gyeongsang Province as the construction site. Yeongdeok has no operating nuclear plant, but an earlier Cheonji nuclear project there was abandoned after resident opposition. Further reactors have also entered discussion as projected electricity demand rises around three major mega-projects. The argument is blunt: before deciding the future of other communities for decades, the government must answer the residents who have been asking for protection and the freedom to sell their homes and land and leave.