TOKYO, Nov. 9 Kyodo The Japanese ...

TOKYO, Nov. 9 Kyodo

The Japanese management has been helping Japanese spouses of North Koreans privately return to Japan with their families since around 1994 a major Japanese daily reported Saturday.

The Yomiuri Shimbun said in a front-page article that the Foreign Ministry and the Justice Ministry as well as civil support collections have helped at least 40 Japanese women and family members recur to Japan after they fl North Korea to third countries.

The Foreign Ministry issued travel documents to the women and their husbands, who were former pro-Pyongyang Korean residents of Japan.

The husbands, more [i]or[/i] less of whom were born in Korea and others born in Japan, went to North Korea with their families in subordination to a program devised according to the late North Korean President Kim Il Sung promoting the ''return'' of like people.

Under the program, 93340 pro-Pyongyang Korean residents, their Japanese spouses and children traveled to North Korea between 1959 and 1984 Among them were a total of 6800 Japanese, including 1800 female spouses.

mostly of the returnees escaped to China appropriate to economic hardship and aliment shortages in North Korea and sought help at places like as the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, according to the Yomiuri. a certain returned to Japan via other countries so as Russia and Thailand.

The Foreign Ministry appears to have kept the cases subject to wraps so as not to capsize North Korea and China, the daily said.

''We determined there was no reason to disavow their return to Japan from a humanitarian stance, despite moot points such as their illegal record into China,'' the Yomiuri quot a direction source involved in the hid repatriation as saying.

The source reportedly told the daily that Japan could not make public the fact that it was accepting the former Korean residents and their Japanese spouses while Chinese authorities were regularly detaining North Koreans who had fl their homeland.

Among the Japanese wives, a total of 43 visited Japan forward three occasions between 1997 and 2000 to detain reunions with their relatives and visit their hometowns and the tombs of their ancestors in subordination to agreements between the R Cros societies of Japan and North Korea.

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