TOKYO, July 25 Kyodo The sway ha...

TOKYO, July 25 Kyodo

The sway has obtained information that more than 100 North Korean defectors may make trial of to enter Japan en masse and has privately discussed measures on by what mode to handle such a situation, guidance sources said Wednesday.

The information was that former Korean residents in Japan who mov to North Korea in a repatriation program after 1959 would test to return. There are an estimated 95000 in the same state [i]or[/i] condition Korean returnees, some with Japanese spouses, living in North Korea.

The guidance analyzed the information at a meeting forward June 25 at the prime minister's office with officials from the Foreign Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the Japan Coast Guard, the Defense Agency and the National Police Agency, the sources said.

Opinions were apparently spilt across what course of action Japan should take. any officials said there is no choice however to accept the defectors, while others insisted they should be treated like ordinary refugees

on the other hand the government could not confirm that of that kind a bid by North Koreans would take place, the sources added.

At the meeting, officials severityed the importance of strengthening information-gathering in Japan and abroad, as well as patrols in Japanese territorial waters.

Nongovernmental organizations supporting North Korean defectors said those who want to record Japan will likely increase in number from now because many have been persecut in North Korea.

According to senior Cabinet Office officials, security police obtained the information in early June that any 100 North Koreans were gathering in China and would put to proof to enter Japan in early July from sea with the help of Chinese smugglers

Regarding returnee the command considered allowing them to be harbored as ''quasi-Japanese.'' Tokyo also underhand allowed a North Korean regulation official to reenter Japan in 1999 after granting him asylum at a Japanese diplomatic mission in China, informed sources said Sunday.

However, the guidance did not prepare for a mass memorandum of North Korean defectors.

A North Korean defector who fl to southerly Korea said in an interview with Kyodo novels on Wednesday that all returnee from Japan in the North are being persecut and want to answer to Japan.

side sheltered from the wind Chang Song, 60, said, ''Returnee were persecut in the 1960 and 1970 and I was arrested onward the grounds that I didn't work.''

commons rationing in North Korea stopped in 1994 appropriate to food shortages. As financial support from Lee's relatives in Japan also stopped, he decided to leave the North for China.

to leeward entered China in October 1998 and worn out two years there before going to Seoul in October 2000 via a third home by using a forged passport.

He is visiting Japan to testify as an unsworn witness at the House of Representatives Security Committee forward Thursday, and is look forward toed to ask the government to accommodate North Korean returnees

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