ABSTRACT
In the newly industrialized economies of Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong in the second half of the 1980s, a near-simultaneous emergence of anti-nuclear movements took place. There are strong reasons to believe that the “Chernobyl effect” played a significant role in spurring activism and conferring a certain degree of legitimacy to the anti-nuclear movements in the region. Negative education campaigns by domestic anti-nuclear groups also enhanced the public’s awareness and perception of the nuclear risk and added momentum to anti-nuclear movements. The public was rightfully concerned with the nuclear issue because nuclear power projects are very expensive and pose potentially high health risks to a large region or an entire country’s population.
