They completely blocked off the house of the chairman, in particular, and searched it, by mobilizing more than twenty policemen and an armored car and bringing media persons of Japan to the scene, creating a terror-ridden atmosphere.

The Committee for Aiding Overseas Compatriots of Korea Friday issued a statement in which it vehemently denounced the Japanese reactionaries' brutal crackdown upon Chongryon.

The statement said:

The forcible search was an unprecedented illegal one contradictory to the Japan constitution and criminal procedure law and an unpardonable human rights abuse against the Koreans in Japan and national discrimination.

Even legal experts and fair-minded media persons of Japan are skeptical about the legal validity and political purpose of the search operation and censuring its injustice.

Chongryon is a dignified overseas organization of the DPRK and the infringement upon it and Koreans in Japan is, therefore, the one on the sovereignty of the DPRK.

Quite clear is the political aim sought by the Japanese authorities in the fascist action taken by them with police forces involved.

That is the sinister political trick to fan up the sentiment against the DPRK, Chongryon and Koreans in the Japanese society in a bid to quell the call of progressives for Japan's apology and reparation for its imperialists' past colonization and justify its lurch to the right.

It is a product of its political plot to extend again its unilateral "sanctions" against the DPRK by all means and methods and deliberately stem the trend of the times for improving the DPRK-Japan relations.

The Japanese authorities should make apology to Chongryon and the DPRK for their rash and reckless search and behave themselves, clearly mindful that their persecution and crackdown upon Chongryon are self-destruction as they push the DPRK-Japan relations to rock bottom.