SEOUL - Sixteen South Korean university students were arrested by police Thursday for attempting to enter the Japanese embassy in Seoul in protest of Japan's dumping of nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean earlier in the day.

The students attempted to break into the Japanese embassy right after Japan started discharging the first batch of radioactive wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean at around 1 pm local time (0400 GMT), according to Yonhap news agency.

The police were quoted as saying that the students chanted slogans against the discharge and attempted to trespass on the entrance of the embassy on the eighth floor of a building in central Seoul.

The students were detained in four police stations on charges of trespassing and the assembly and demonstration act violation.

About 40 other fellow students held a press conference near the Japanese embassy against the wastewater discharge before being dispersed by the police.