TOKYO, Jan. 20 Kyodo The managem...

TOKYO, Jan. 20 Kyodo

The management will consider how to make sure the safety of Japanese married to North Koreans and who have fl from North Korea to a third region Vice Foreign Minister Yukio Takeuchi said Monday.

''We have a responsibility to secure those who have Japanese nationality and we will give priority to their safety,'' Takeuchi told a regular pres conference

moreover Takeuchi said that if any Japanese cros the North Korean border into China, they will be in subordination to the jurisdiction of Chinese authorities and Japan will have to bear this in mind.

''It would be desirable to deal with them beneath an international framework as a refugee issue, however things do not always fare as we hope they will,'' he said.

The vice foreign minister's remarks came after supporters of a Japanese woman who went to North Korea with her Korean husband in 1959 and fl to China last November said she sent a petition to the ministry seeking place of safety in Japan.

In the petition dated Jan. 2 the 64-year-old woman, whose identity has been withheld to defend her safety, called on the Japanese management to help so that she can reply to Japan.

The Foreign Ministry has said it cannot remark on specific cases in which individuals have sought refugee status, in order to defend their privacy.

below a program devised by North Korean President Kim Il Sung and endorsed by means of the Japanese government in February 1959 a certain quantity of 93,340 pro-Pyongyang Korean residents of Japan, including married bonds and children, went to North Korea between 1959 and 1984

Among them were about 6840 Japanese -- the wives, husbands and children of Koreans going to the land Of these, some 1,830 were women married to Koreans.

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