A joint statement was read out at the conference.

It said that the Abe government and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan amended the ministry's directive on applying tuition free program for senior high schools and excluded the Korean schools from it.

This decision triggered off stronger criticism and opposition among people of different social standings including political, media, judicial circles of Japan and international organizations, it said, and went on:

The government of Japan, assailant, continues discriminating against even the descendants of Koreans in Japan, far from redressing its past crimes before them, victims of the colonial rule of the Japanese imperialists. This is an unpardonable inhuman action unprecedented in the world.

The Abe government and the ministry should cancel the unreasonably amended directive at once and apply the tuition-free program to Korean schools at an early date.

Then followed speeches.

The speakers said that the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination recently expressed concern over the Japan's exclusion of Korean schools from the tuition-free program.

The program is purely an issue of education, they said, accusing the Japanese government of regarding Korean schools as hostage, linking the program to politics.

They stressed they would wage a dynamic struggle against the Japanese government's ceaseless moves for suppressing Chongryon and obliterating national education.