Seoul to conduct environmental tests near U.S. military bases

SEOUL, June 2 (Yonhap) -- The Seoul Metropolitan Government will launch an environmental survey next week on areas near U.S. military bases in the capital, city officials said Thursday, amid growing public anxiety over the alleged burial of the toxic chemical Agent Orange inside a U.S. army camp in the South.
The city will check the degree of groundwater pollution beneath 10 locations near U.S. military bases from Tuesday through June 30, said officials at the Seoul Metropolitan Government.
There is a total of 12 U.S. military installations in Seoul, including Yongsan Garrison, the main U.S. military headquarters in central Seoul.
Seoul has conducted regular tests of groundwater near U.S. bases, but there has been no case in which contamination exceeded normal levels over the past five years, officials said.
"The city decided to launch the environmental tests amid suspicions that chemicals may be buried at some of the U.S. military bases in Seoul," a city official said.
South Korea and the U.S. are in the midst of jointly investigating claims by retired American soldiers that in 1978 they helped dump large amounts of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange inside Camp Carroll in Chilgok, 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul.
The claims sparked a series of allegations that the U.S. military had buried chemical materials at its former military bases.
Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant widely used during the Vietnam War, was sprayed by the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) in the 1960s around the Demilitarized Zone to thwart North Korean infiltrations.
About 28,500 U.S. troops are based in South Korea under a mutual defense treaty signed during the 1950-1953 Korean War.