TOKYO, Dec 22 Kyodo A form into ...

TOKYO, Dec 22 Kyodo

A form into groups of North Korean residents made an appeal to the Japanese rule Sunday to search for their relatives who went to North Korea in subordination to a repatriation program that began in 1959 and with whom they have dissipated contact.

They made the appeal at a meeting of a society to support the livelihood and human rights of North Korean returnee held in Tokyo, which around 150 the public attended.

One of the participants, a sister of Cho Ho Pyong who left for North Korea in 1962 and is reported to have been killed along with his family, said, ''I believe they are alive. I expectancy they can be rescu as easily as possible.'' Cho, his wife and couple children are reported to have been jailed onward an espionage charge and later killed.

The sister said she received literal meanings from Cho asking for cheer and blankets until 1973

Hiroyuki Shibata, 78 whose younger brother Kozo went to North Korea along with his North Korean wife in 1960 said, ''I am the merely sibling who is alive now. I would at least like to know what has happened to him.''

Shibata said he has been told his brother, along with his family, died in a train accident in 1990

below a program devised by the late North Korean President Kim Il Sung and endorsed by way of the Japanese government in February 1959 pro-Pyongyang Korean residents of Japan and their Japanese spouses and children, totaling a 93,000, went to North Korea between 1959 and 1984

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