Shortly ago, when supplying masks to kindergartens and nurseries, etc. in Saitama City for preventing the spread of the epidemic, the city authorities committed such an unethical act as excluding the kindergarten of Korean school from the supply list.

Explaining its reason, they made provocative claim that "in case masks are used for inappropriate purpose, they can do nothing against it" and "the supplied masks might be resold", which hurts the dignity of Koreans in Japan.

Enraged at the claim, officials of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) and Koreans in Japan staged a strong protest for three days along with bitter denunciation by the press at home and abroad and public criticism. As a result, the city authorities had to withdraw their unreasonable insistence that "the city's decision can not be reversed", and announce the supply of masks to the kindergarten.

But the mayor of the city, far from making an apology for the inhuman national discrimination, made shameless remarks that the announcement was not aimed at calming down the protest, but made by securing enough masks and increasing the objects of supply to prevent the spread of the epidemic.

The issue of mask supply is not a matter for a few sheets of mask, but the one related with the safety and dignity of Koreans in Japan.

All facts clearly prove that the Japanese authorities' policy of national discrimination has deeply permeated the local self-governing bodies and the whole Japanese society is being infected with the "virus" of reactionary ultra-nationalism, national chauvinism and hatred of Koreans.

The Japanese reactionaries have reduced the whole of the island country to a theatre of excluding Koreans, regarding the DPRK and Chongryon, a dignified overseas Koreans' organization, as a thorn in their flesh.

In particular, Abe and his group, who set anti-DPRK and anti-Chongryon orientation as one of government policies, are hell-bent on stamping out the Chongryon by applying extremely vicious means that bring any preceding regimes to shame, and even do not hesitate to victimize Korean pupils and children.

It is a legal duty and historic responsibility of the Japanese authorities to protect the safety, rights and interests of Korean residents in Japan, victims of the Japanese imperialists' colonial rule over Korea and their descendents.

This being a hard fact, the Japanese authorities have been engrossed in such heinous practices as to suspend subsidizing Korean schools and exclude Korean schools and kindergartens from the tuition-free program for senior high schools and program for free education and upbringing of children.

The anti-DPRK and anti-Chongryon tendency prevalent in the Japanese society, witnessed by day-to-day blackmail, slander and gangsterism against Koreans in Japan, is a dangerous social epidemic caused by the present regime's hostile policy towards the DPRK and its policy of discrimination against the Korean nation.

The Japanese authorities are chiefly to blame for the exclusion of kindergarten from the supply of masks.

They should make an apology to all the Koreans in Japan for the reckless act, not laying the blame at local self-governing bodies.