A spokesman for the DPRK-Japan Friendship Association in a statement Tuesday said in this regard:

The Japanese authorities announced that they would grant the benefits of free expenses to all 3-5 year-old children at infant education and childcare facilities, including kindergartens and nurseries, from October 1. The enforcement of the "free infant education and child upbringing" system is pursuant to the "law on support to upbringing children" adopted at the Diet in May.

But due to the Japanese authorities' acts of discrimination a severe situation was created at present in which applications for approving childcare facilities for infant classes at Korean schools were all declined and they were excluded from the list of support.

The Japanese reactionaries' vulgar and brutal acts amount to destroying the places for learning and playing of children, the manifestation of their deep-rooted sinister intention to cripple the national education of Koreans in Japan.

The Japanese authorities' absolutely unreasonable and shameless acts have now touched off towering indignation among all the Korean people.

Absolutely intolerable are the mean and cruel acts of the Japanese reactionaries to obliterate the democratic national education of Chongryon and the national identity of the Korean community in Japan.

It is natural for Japan to apply the support system to the Korean children in Japan both in the light of the crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists against the Korean nation in the past and the crimes committed by Japan by deliberately obstructing the development of national education for the Korean residents in Japan.

The Japanese authorities must behave themselves, bearing in mind that their discriminatory attitude towards the Korean children in Japan is like a suicidal act of plunging the DPRK-Japanese relations into the irreversible worst phase.