The Green Nuisance Strikes Again

Greenpeace has sent out an email to its supporters asking for their help "to protect our activists and to stop a South Korean whale meat factory" in Ulsan, soon to be the site of the 57th meeting of the International Whaling Commission.

The City Council of Ulsan has given Greenpeace a deadline of May 16 to "get out of town". The activists have erected a geodesic dome tent, complete with banners and "educational material" near the site where a whale meat production facility is planned to be built soon. Greenpeace met with city officials, and informed them that they would not leave unless plans for the factory were scrapped. This incredible arrogance will probably not be tolerated by a city that is proud to host the IWC, and to present South Korea's own traditions of whale use.

Greenpeace notes that the minke whale butchering site shall handle animals that are caught in fishing nets. Although these catches are claimed by Korea to be accidental, Greenpeace of course claims that they are purposeful and that they are a dishonest fact of life in South Korea. Another perspective is that there are so many minke whales off Korea's coasts that they are commonly entangled, as they are in the waters off Japan, and that it would be wasteful to refrain from using them. Korean people have their own long-standing culinary traditions in whale consumption that are unique to this peninsular nation. They are not about to give them up because foreigners demonstrate their intolerance towards them. Therefore, because people in the Republic of Korea have their own tradition of whale use, they are now a target of Greenpeace and the many other anti-use NGOs that shall soon descend on Ulsan and begin their usual harangues of objection to local culture.

The Greenpeace email uses the familiar tactic of providing a link to a Korean official, so that supporters may demand that the whale factory shall not be built, and that the activists should be allowed to remain on the ground where they have pitched their tent. Of course, once these activists are arrested and jailed, there will be another email announcing this event, and giving supporters the opportunity to once again, demand that they be released.

IWMC supports all sustainable, traditional use of abundant species. The Greenpeace effort to gain media attention through exposing their activist volunteers to arrest and incarceration is typically tiresome. We support whatever firm means the people in Ulsan shall use to safely remove these persons from their unauthorized camp as they assert their rights to control their own land use and to construct whatever food production facilities are considered appropriate. Greenpeace, Go Home.