According to an article in Japan Today, a South Korean man who is a victim of an asbestos-related disease arrived in Japan with his supporters earlier this week to protest in front of Nichias Corp., a Tokyo-based housing materials manufacturer that exported machinery and technology to a South Korean company that made asbestos products until 1992. The man was sickened by exposure to those products.

However, officials at Nichias, founded in 1896 and long a leader in the thermal insulation industry in Japan, refused to meet with the man and his companions. The protestors had asked that they be allowed to explain their concerns to the company, which set up an asbestos products manufacturing plant in Busan, South Korea in 1971, operating jointly alongside a South Korean company.

Officials at the Tokyo plant sent a message to the protestors indicating that they should take their concerns to the South Korean company rather than to Nichias.

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