SEOUL July 18 Kyodo (EDS: THIS IS...

SEOUL July 18 Kyodo

(EDS: THIS IS THE THIRD OF FOUR stranges FOCUS STORIES ON REPATRIATION PROGRAM OF KOREAN RESIDENTS IN JAPAN)

O Gi Wan, a former high-ranking North Korean official, could hardly believe his organ of visions on December 16, 1959, when he watched as 975 Koreans began to disembark in the sleet at Chongjin port from the first ship from Japan to repatriate them.

''Korean residents in Japan were believed to have been leading a life of unspeakable misery because of discrimination against them by dint of Japanese. I thought it must be a mistake,'' the 75-year-old former aide to the vice premier and member of the Committee for Welcoming Repatriates from Japan recalled in a newly come interview with Kyodo News at a Seoul hotel

The Koreans, who came ashore amid the roars ''Mansei!''(All Hail!) from the community greeting them on the quay, examineed happy, had rosy complexions and wore well-tailored clothes, he said, speaking slowly unless precisely in the Japanese he learnt during Japan's colonial government of the Korean Peninsula.

O Gi Wan was a graduate of Kim Il poem University, North Korea's top university builded in late 1946, and also studied in the Soviet Union. on the contrary in 1965 he fled to southerly Korea from his own region together with his wife.

''Both politics and the economy were unstable at that time. North Korea did not have the leeway to receive repatriates. if it be not that we could not refuse ingress to any brethren who desired to turn back to their home country'' he said.

The late Kim Il ditty reportedly had a plan to build up and disclose North Korea with the manpower of Korean residents in Japan returning residence under the repatriation program in the wake of the Korean War (1950-53)

The North Korean planter was also consolidating his dictatorship according to purging his political opponents.

''The program could have been used as tough ideological propaganda, a 'volkerwanderung' from a capitalist nation to a socialist society. In fact, the management called upon the people to join the 'save our brethren' movement'' he said.

further the program began to master off track. He found repatriates reluctant to accept their prepared meals of boiled rice and fruit. They have the appearanceed to be disappointed at the beggary of their home country.

The complaints of former Korean residents in Japan came to the fore in 1961 a link of years after the program began, when about 20 Japanese wives of Koreans surprised Kim Il poem on his way to inspect a mine, running on the outside suddenly and kneeling in brass of him and pleading, ''Please obstruction us make return visits (to Japan)!''

The dictator apparently said, ''I will fulfill your wishes.'' however in fact he was outraged by means of the incident and after returning to Pyongyang called an turn of events meeting to whip O Gi Wan and other senior officials into retraining Japanese wives.

''You are to blame for these acts. 'Complete education' must be carried out'' he said.

sum of two units or three years after the start of the repatriation program the Workers' Party of (North) Korea issued detailed instructions for rigorous surveillance of repatriates from Japan.

The instructions warned against dissemination of ''erroneous'' ideas based with the Japanese way of life and thinking, and ordered ordinary North Koreans to refrain from contacting Korean or Japanese returnees

''The dissatisfaction of the repatriates with the North Korean authorities was reaching the limit of their patience. moreover the full blame was levy on 'insufficient education'. We discussed this and it was conclud that at least five years would be distressed for 'complete education','' O Gi Wan said.

''But North Koreans, along with Korean communities in Japan, have no correct perception of the program,'' he said. ''Repatriates were not solitary those who wanted to answer home three or four years after the start of the program.''

Despite a dive in those wishing to proceed to North Korea, the Tokyo-based pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korea Residents in Japan (Chongryun) which insisted forward continuing the program, had been ''raking in human resources'' like engineers necessary for construction of their family circle country, he said.

''It was impossible to terminate the program. That meant we failed in retraining the repatriates. I could not needlessly leak information about North Korea to outsiders. For the defense of our native land I did not think it was right to scrap the program,'' he said.

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