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April 14, 2005
Mr Jim goes to Seoul
Today I visited the Environment Ministry in Seoul to ask for their support in treating whales as endangered species, not marine resources "to be utilised" as the Fisheries department currently see them. The meeting was a great success. It was the first time that we have broached this issue with them, but they seemed really keen, and mentioned that they would like to fund a whale survey next year to study whale and dolphin populations more carefully. We also brought up the issue of the whalemeat factory and they were quick to point out that it was another department's responsibility and not their own. I replied that 17,000 cyberactivists disagreed, and had made these thoughts quite clear by sending emails arguing that whales should be protected not persecuted -a statistic that really shocked them.
In fact the sheer number of cyberactivists that have sent emails to the embassies around the world has attracted the attention of the press in Seoul, and tomorrow morning we have a press release to officially announce the number of people around the world that have written cyber protests! (Note from Adele - the numbers have now gone up to 18,120!)
Meanwhile the camp has been the victim of more counter protests by local pro-whaling fishermen. Last night a fisherman burnt fishing nets outside the Embassy in protest at our attempts to ban whaling. The Embassy crew invited him in for a cup of tea and after an hour of talking he was offering to bring us Sushi and soju (nauseatingly sweet, but nonetheless delicious Korean wine). (Note from Adele - I can personally vouch for Soju since I managed to consume quite a lot of it, to the bemusement of some of the locals).
Tomorrow we have more meetings with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, followed by a swift journey back to the camp in time for a visit by interested journalists. The story is rapidly spreading - this morning we had international Australian and Italian news services interviewing us on site. (Note from Adele - Jim tells me the Australian service agreed to feature the story after the sports results on Australian radio. I told him that as an Australian I could affirm that this meant the story was very high priority indeed!)
Will report back after the meeting with the foreign affiars office tomorrow,
Best,
Jim and the Embassy Ambassadors
Posted by Adele at April 14, 2005 01:14 PM
