Posted on 07/01/2007 7:24:50 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
North Korea says Japan unfit for nuclear talks
By Reuters
Sunday July 1, 09:30 PM
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea accused Japan on Sunday of trying to disband a pro-Pyongyang group of ethnic Koreans and said Tokyo's "dastardly" behaviour casts doubts whether it is fit to sit at six-way talks on Pyongyang's nuclear programme.
North Korea has previously discredited Japan's role at the six-way talks, which also group South Korea, Russia, China and the United States, but agreed in a February nuclear disarmament deal to work on improving ties with Tokyo.
A Tokyo court in June cleared the way for a state debt collection agency to impound a 10-storey headquarters of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon), a move the group said was designed to force it to dissolve.
"This is nothing but a wanton infringement upon the sovereignty of the DPRK, which no previous regime of Japan dared as it is a move to physically remove the centre of activities of Chongryon," the North's foreign ministry spokesman said.
DPRK is short for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.
"As Japan is behaving so dastardly with a black-hearted intention, the DPRK cannot but raise a serious question as to whether there is any need for its continued participation in the six-party talks," the spokesman said in a statement carried by the North's official KCNA news agency.
The Tokyo District Court ordered Chongryon in June to pay 62.7 billion yen ($509 million) and allowed the state Resolution and Collection Corp. (RCC) to seize the group's headquarters in lieu of payment.
In a bid to avoid its headquarters from being seized, Chongryon had sold the property to a former head of Japan's intelligence service, but the deal collapsed after prosecutors began investigating it.
The former intelligence chief has said he had wanted to protect the rights of the ethnic Koreans by preventing them from losing their headquarters.
The RCC took over the 62.7 billion yen in nonperforming loans from now-defunct credit unions closely associated with Chongryon, and argued they were effectively for Chongryon.
Of the around 600,000 ethnic Koreans who live in Japan, some 80,000 are pro-North, and Chongryon functions as their embassy because Japan and North Korea have no diplomatic ties.
Many of the ethnic Koreans are descendents of the 2 million Koreans brought as forced labourers during Tokyo's 1910-1945 colonisation of the peninsula. Most of them were born and raised in Japan, speak fluent Japanese and marry Japanese nationals.
Chongryon has been under the close watch of the Japanese government and some of its members have been harassed by Japanese right-wingers especially after North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents had abducted Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s.
Ping!
North korea has no intention to deal in good faith at any negotiations. The united states learned that during the Korean war. Nothing has changed them.
They are a pack of liars and thieves. Not worth wasting time on . sanction them till they starve and cut them off fromeverything. Lay Siege to them. They will only negotiate at the point of a sword and then they cant be trusted.
Who they going blame US or Godzilla ROFL
Very well said! Did anybody really expect them to end their nuclear program?
Negotiating with N. Korea is like trying to catch a greased pig.
The reference to pigs was intentional.
Better luck catching it by starving or shooting it.:-)
Ping!
Thanks for the update.
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