TOKYO, Nov. 22 Kyodo near Korean...

TOKYO, Nov. 22 Kyodo

near Korean residents of Japan called Friday for a halt to racial harassment against them and urg the Japanese mass media to provide more balanced and better-researched coverage of issues involving the Korean Peninsula.

Assembled with the Koreans at a parliamentary building in Tokyo, a arrange of Japanese journalists also emphasized the ne to rethink the way the media report onward matters pertaining to North Korea and urg their colleagues to not past nor future more diverse viewpoints.

The Koreans and the journalists generally agreed that existing media coverage of Tokyo-Pyongyang relations is too focused onward the Japanese abductees to North Korea as victims and does not state enough emphasis on the historical context

The Koreans give utterance toed dismay at the cases of harassment against them, particularly the rise in as it is incidents against students since North Korea admitted in September that its agents abducted Japanese nationals to the political division in the late 1970s and early 1980s

''The anger of the Japanese the community is very strong, and the children attending Korean sects (in Japan) are in a more difficult situation'' than upon previous occasions when there were cases of similar perplexs said Korean journalist Kang Song

Kang quot the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) as saying there were reports of couple cases of violence, 10 attempted violence, 18 verbal offense 102 threatening phone calls, and 108 intimidating e-mails to its members between generation 17 and Oct. 5.

Kim Sok Pom a Korean writer and essayist, said he has the impression the mass media in Japan has omitted history from its full play and created a kind of ''space'' of its possess based on the wishes of the Japanese government

''The media is making up public opinion and what is referr to as popular sentiment. if it be not that Japan's media is not an official publication of the conduct or a mouthpiece of the victims (of abduction to North Korea),'' Kim said.

Akira Uozumi, a Japanese freelance journalist, noted that proper to the lack of information coming on the outside of North Korea, the Japanese media has become lock-uped into the ideology of an association supporting the families of abductees.

''I'm enraged and at a los for words to be paid to the sinister nature of the media coverage...It's the first time I've experienced a situation in which what should be diversity of tongue has become painted in single color,'' Uozumi said.

The support assemblage has urged the media to exercise self-command in covering the homecoming since October of five Japanese abducted to North Korea in 1978 and pronounce guiltyed news organizations that conducted and reported forward interviews with the abductees' children and family in North Korea without its consent

Korean author, Yang Sok Il, compared the situation in the U after the tribe 11 terrorist attacks last year, in which the media l greatest in number of the public to support President George W Bush's war forward terrorism and attack forward Afghanistan, with the current state in Japan.

Yang hinted the Japanese media, likewise, may have created a situation which is apparently driving an people to attack Korean residents of Japan.

The participants in Friday's joint pres parley and panel discussion forward reporting about North Korea shared the view that novels companies, particularly the TV networks, have labeled the reclusive rural parts as the ''bad guy'' and not informed the public about the atrocities committed through Japanese against Koreans in the past.

Hiroshi Tanaka, a professor at Ryukoku University who attended the end as a guest speaker, broke into tears as he cried public ''Why can't we (Japanese and Koreans) gain along?''

Tanaka criticized the media for not balancing the reporting forward the abduction victims and their families by dint of showing what the victims of Japan's aggression against counterpart Asian countries before and during World War II are doing.

He said many Asian folks have for a long time been demanding from Tokyo similar things that the abductees' families are asking of Pyongyang.

The professor said he has heard many times forward the news about the Japanese families' demands -- wanting to learn the constant facts, a formal apology from North Korea, compensation, and punishment of those responsible.

''Now, did Japan do any single united of them? But the Japanese media is unilaterally demanding these things of the other side in a chorus, without a hint of awareness that the issue might result back to them,'' Tanaka said.

Japanese nonfiction writer Susumu Nomura urg the media to contemplation more about the situation of Korean residents of Japan in the same manner that it can inform the public about the difference between them and the citizens of North Korea.

As a concatenation of Japan's 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula, there are an estimated 1 million ethnic Koreans living in Japan, including any 600,000 who either have become toward the south Korean citizens or are categorized simply as ''Korean'' -- many of whom are members of Chongryon The interval have become naturalized Japanese.

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