ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
September 17, 2018
Tokyo chief opens replacement
for city’s iconic fish market
By Yuri Kageyama
AP Business Writer
OKYO — As a brass band
blared “Anchors Aweigh,”
Tokyo’s governor led the
opening ceremony for the Japanese
capital’s new fish market and tried to
assuage concerns about contamina-
tion at the site that delayed the move
from the famed Tsukiji market.
The new Toyosu market won’t open
for business until October 11, but
hundreds
of
government
and
fisheries industry officials in dark
suits came to the ribbon-cutting
ceremony at the sprawling facility.
Wholesale fish sales have ended at
Tsukiji, which opened in 1935 and
became one of the city’s most popular
tourist attractions.
After taking a tour of the new
facility, Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike
told the crowd that Toyosu will carry
on the “Tsukiji brand,” which repre-
sents a food culture loved around the
world.
“Safety has been ensured,” she
said. “Steps have been taken.”
Koike delayed the move scheduled
for November 2016 after an
inspection found arsenic and other
contaminants in the groundwater at
the site.
Tsukiji became a favorite tourist
spot for its array of tiny sushi
restaurants, shops selling Japanese
knives, and stalls hawking hundreds
of species of seafood as well as sweets.
Yet it is also a working market,
where an average of 1.6 billion yen, or
about $14.5 million, worth of seafood
is moved each day.
T
ICONIC IMAGES. In this circa 1987 photo, former Associated Press
photographer Kim Chonkil looks at negatives at the Seoul, South Korea
bureau. He is wearing a cast because he broke his arm when he was
caught between rock-throwing students and riot police. Kim, whose im-
ages captured South Korea’s turbulent transition from dictatorship to
democracy, has died at age 89. (AP Photo/Corporate Archives)
Former AP photojournalist
Kim Chonkil dies at age 89
By Kim Tong-Hyung
The Associated Press
S
EOUL, South Korea — Former Associated Press
photojournalist Kim Chonkil, whose images
captured South Korea’s turbulent transition from
dictatorship to democracy, has died. He was 89 years old.
Kim’s son, Kim Kuchul, said he died in New York after
fighting kidney and respiratory problems.
Kim covered South Korea for The AP for nearly 40 years
until leaving the company in 1987, a period during which
the country rose from the devastation of the 1950-1953
Korean War into an Asian industrial power and a
full-fledged democracy following a bloody struggle against
dictatorship.
Kim will be remembered for one of the most iconic
photos in South Korea’s history — a May 1961 photo of
Gen. Park Chung-hee, in an army cap and sunglasses,
observing a march of military cadets in the capital, Seoul,
two days after seizing power in a coup.
For most South Koreans, it was the first time they saw
the staunch anti-communist dictator who would rule the
country for nearly 20 years before being assassinated in
1979. Park left a mixed legacy as a successful economic
strategist and a brutal strongman who tortured and
executed dissidents.
“He was at the very front line of recording South Korea’s
contemporary history,” Paul Shin, a longtime AP writer,
said about his former colleague Kim. “He always tried
harder than others to be at the scene. He had a strong
sense of responsibility, but was also a very generous
person.”
Kim was hired by The AP during the Korean War,
initially helping American reporters as an interpreter and
translator before formally getting a job as a photo-
journalist. He also covered the fall of South Korea’s first
president, Syngman Rhee, who fled into exile in Hawai‘i in
1960 amid nationwide protests over election-rigging
suspicions and the 1980 pro-democracy demonstrations in
the southern city of Gwangju, where hundreds died in a
violent crackdown.
Kim also covered a wave of pro-democracy protests in
1987 that eventually forced the government of Chun
Doo-hwan, another army general who took power in a
coup weeks after Park’s death, to accept free presidential
elections.
Kim left The AP later in 1987 and worked as a photo
editor for TIME magazine during the 1988 Summer
Olympics in Seoul. He immigrated to the United States in
1993 and settled in New York.
He is survived by his wife and three children. A funeral
is planned in New York.
MARKET MOVES. Part of the new Toyosu market is seen prior to the opening ceremony for
the new site of Tokyo’s fish market. Tokyo’s hugely popular Tsukiji fish market will be closed for up
to five years while it is modernized and turned into a food theme park. The fish market’s move to
Toyosu was originally scheduled for last year, but was delayed due to underground water contami-
nation at the new complex. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
This past weekend was the last
time its iconic early morning auction
opened for visitors.
The city’s plan calls for a new
mall-like
facility
for
Tsukiji,
including a theme park. Some of the
stores and restaurants in the area
surrounding Tsukiji’s wholesale
market and auction area will stay,
but its core fish market operations
are moving to Toyosu.
Officials hope the new state-of-the-
art market at Toyosu will also become
a tourist attraction.
The move to Toyosu has been
unpopular from the start because an
earlier plan envisioned keeping the
fish market in Tsukiji by modernizing
the facility with construction while it
continued to operate. Tsukiji is closer
to central Tokyo.
The city under Koike’s predeces-
sors decided an updated facility was
needed for sanitation and efficiency
reasons. The proposal was damaged
by the discovery of contaminants at
the new site, and some critics have
said consumer confidence can’t be
restored, despite assurances that the
new facility has since been made safe.
Almost every speaker at the
opening ceremony talked about how
long the struggle had been for the
move, including wrangling among
city lawmakers.
Takaaki Yamazaki, the head of
Koto Ward, where Toyosu is located,
used the Japanese expression for
moving beyond the past with water,
to welcome the new market.
“Let’s wash all that away and let
bygones be bygones,” he said.
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