China linked to online misinformation campaign targeting Fukushima water release, reports say
Published: 01 May. 2026, 17:42
![An aerial view of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northern Japan on Aug. 24, 2023. [AP/YONHAP]](https://koreaseafood.online/data/photo/2026/05/01/9054a7e8-ac87-45dc-a5cc-91ce761d6451.jpg)
An aerial view of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northern Japan on Aug. 24, 2023. [AP/YONHAP]
China was likely behind a coordinated misinformation campaign targeting Japan's release of treated wastewater from the ruined Fukushima nuclear plant, according to analyses cited by Japanese media on Thursday.
The campaign also extended to Korea, where the wastewater release was highly controversial, the reports said.
The suspicious online activity began almost immediately after the Japanese government decided in April 2021 that it would begin discharging treated radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which suffered a catastrophic meltdown during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that struck the Tohoku region in northeastern Japan.
Content critical of the decision first appeared on a Japanese-language TikTok account on April 15, 2021, just two days after the decision was announced, according to the Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun.
The account — which used an image of a man reportedly exposed to radiation in China three decades earlier as its profile photo — uploaded a series of similar posts over five days.
Roughly two months later, the posts were amplified by what analysts described as a wave of multilingual engagement, including comments in English, Korean and Japanese.
By June, each post had drawn around 1,000 likes and between 670 and 700 comments, according to Japanese information analysis company JNI.
JNI noted that many of those comments contained phrases that are not used by native Japanese speakers and repeatedly used the term “Godzilla,” a word that Chinese state media frequently employed when criticizing the wastewater discharge plan.
![President Lee Jae Myung, then chief of the liberal Democratic Party, speaks during a rally in Incheon on June 17, 2023, against Japan's plan to release of treated wastewater from the ruined Fukushima nuclear plant. [NEWS1]](https://koreaseafood.online/data/photo/2026/05/01/630ea5d4-fd0a-44c8-8dba-496fe972dd8f.jpg)
President Lee Jae Myung, then chief of the liberal Democratic Party, speaks during a rally in Incheon on June 17, 2023, against Japan's plan to release of treated wastewater from the ruined Fukushima nuclear plant. [NEWS1]
“These appear to be deliberately created accounts engaged in activity designed to make the posts seem widely circulated,” said Nanase Tatsuguchi, a senior analyst at JNI.
Separate findings by Microsoft point to a broader, sustained campaign.
The company identified a Chinese-linked influence operation known as Storm-1376, which operated across 175 websites in 58 languages in an April 2024 report.
The report found that Storm-1376 intensified its activity around August 2023, when Japan began releasing the treated wastewater.
The group uploaded hundreds of posts critical of Japan on Korean platforms, some of which contained misinformation about the public health risks of the wastewater discharge. Many also incorporated remarks by current President Lee Jae Myung, who was then serving as leader of the liberal Democratic Party.
In his comments at the time, Lee denounced the discharge as “nuclear contaminated water terrorism” and “a second Pacific War.”
The Microsoft report said the posts appeared aimed at deepening political divisions within Korea by selectively amplifying divisive rhetoric.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY YOU SEONG-UN [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.
Standards Board Policy (0/250자)