TOKYO, Jan. 24 Kyodo The regulat...

TOKYO, Jan. 24 Kyodo

The regulation will be flexible in handling petition fors for refuge in Japan from former Korean residents who mov to North Korea if it were not that later fled the abiding habitation a high-ranking Foreign Ministry official indicated Friday.

''Former Korean residents of Japan also have a reaching far down relationship with Japan, and the Japanese rule cannot simply say we're not concerned'' the official said, speaking in succession condition of anonymity.

In respect to the increasing number of North Koreans fleeing the home the official also said that if an individual who has fl North Korea has Japanese citizenship, he or she will be accepted into Japan.

In the case of North Koreans fleeing their native land they will be dealt with as refugee the official said, adding that a framework to deal with like North Koreans needs to be created at international institutions including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR)

below a program devised by North Korean President Kim Il Sung and endorsed by means of the Japanese government in February 1959 a 93,340 Korean residents of Japan, including married links 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 the Japanese, 1,830 were women married to Koreans.

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