North Korean Residents in Japan Accuse Tokyo of ‘Political Repressions’

The General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, Chongryon, often referred to as the de-facto embassy of North Korea, on Thursday accused Japanese authorities of carrying out "political repressions" in the spirit of the anti-Pyongyang policy of the United States.

TOKYO (Sputnik) — Earlier in May, Japanese police arrested three men, including Ho Jong-man's 30-year-old son, on suspicion of illegally importing 1.8 metric tons of expensive matsutake mushrooms, valued at more than $35,000, from North Korea.

"We have to assume that the Japanese government carries out political repressions and human rights violations in line with the United States" hostile policy towards [North] Korea and the attempts to increase pressure on our country," the organization's chairman, Ho Jong-man, said at a reception marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of Chongryon.

In 2006, after Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear trial, Japan banned all imports from North Korea.

According to Ho Jong-man, the charges are trumped-up.

"They have no proof," he stressed.

Chongryon was created in 1955 to protect the interests of Koreans who willingly migrated or were brought to Japan by force before the end of WWII. In 1948, when the Korean peninsula was divided into two states, some of the Koreans residing in Japan assumed the citizenship of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Currently some 600,000 pro-Pyongyang Koreans live in Japan.