TOKYO, May 31 Kyodo The Justice M...

TOKYO, May 31 Kyodo

The Justice Ministry has asseverateed against an article run from the Yomiuri Shimbun upon Thursday saying the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau is recommending granting refugee status to a former North Korean agent, ministry officials said Friday.

The ministry has sent a literal meaning of protest to the major daily's managing editor in the name of Immigration Bureau chief Nobuya Masuda, saying the article ''goe against the facts'' and demanding a correction and an apology, the officials said.

In answer to the ministry's move, Yukio Edano, policy chief of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan, issued a statement expressing his objection to what he calls the ministry's overreaction to the article.

''If the part about refugee recognition being highly likely is false, then it is a question involving (the Yomiuri's) outlook as a of recent origins organization and not something that would lead to calls for a correction or an apology,'' Edano said.

''I can say this is an obvious ordeal of the Justice Ministry's lack of consideration across freedom of expression,'' he said.

The ministry said in its verbal expression of protest it is ''extremely regrettable that an article of speculation, which goe against the facts and gives readers the guilty impression, has appeared'' in the paper.

The Yomiuri Shimbun reported in its Thursday morning editions that the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau has compiled a report recommending that the man, who uses the Japanese name Kenki Aoyama, be given refugee status.

The paper said the chances are high that the man would become the first North Korean acknowledged according to Japan as a refugee.

Aoyama was common of tens of thousands of Korean residents in Japan who mov to North Korea subordinate to a joint Japan-North Korea repatriation program when he left for the North in 1960 He later fl to China and came back to Japan in 1999

Aoyama is a leader of an 18-member assemblage of escapees from North Korea in Japan and has sought refugee status and support from the Japanese management for the group's members.

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