In the written request they accused the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan of officially announcing a stop to the procedures for applying the tuition-free program to the Korean schools as regards the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

This means the government is overturning itself its statement that it is necessary to objectively judge the issue of applying the tuition-waiver program from a correct viewpoint on education, they charged.

This step reminds people of the past history in which Japan forcibly dissolved the Federation of Korean Residents in Japan, the predecessor of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, in 1949, closed Korean schools and confiscated properties of Koreans in Japan, they noted.

They denounced the Japanese government's recent step as an unreasonable one of breaching the Japanese Constitution, the International Convention on Human Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

They urged the Japanese government to apologize for discriminating against students of Korean schools and those related to them and making a mockery at them and immediately apply the tuition-free program.