Here is just all he more reason why I can’t stand the Chosen Soren organization in Japan:

Reporting from Osaka, Japan — Ko Jong-mi can still see her mother lying on her deathbed in a shabby North Korean village.

“I’m sorry,” the old woman said, her voice weak. “I’m the one who brought you to this life. Please, please forgive me.”

Now 49, Ko long ago forgave her mother for becoming an unwitting victim of North Korea’s covert Homecoming Project. Under the slogan “Let’s go back to the fatherland!” the campaign persuaded more than 93,000 ethnic Koreans and their families living in Japan to emigrate to North Korea from 1959 to 1984.

A widow supporting her three children with work at an Osaka cardboard factory, Ko’s mother fell prey to alleged North Korean operatives who told her about a “heaven on Earth” that provided free education and health benefits.

The recruiters, activists say, were members of the General Assn. of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chosen Soren, whose Tokyo headquarters acts as North Korea’s unofficial embassy. Chosen Soren has denied any connection with the program.

It was 1963. Ko’s mother had heard rumors that volunteers could leave after three years if they were unhappy. Because she knew of no returnees, she assumed that no one wanted to go back — not that they weren’t allowed to.

Ko recalls her mother repeating, “I never dreamed that they would never let us return.”

Hoping for better benefits as a family with a combined five children, Ko’s mother quickly married a Korean Japanese man and boarded the 111th Emigration Passenger Ship for North Korea. Ko was 2 years old.

Ko’s family realized their mistake even before they arrived in the North Korean port of Chongjin.

“My mother said my 15-year-old stepbrother could feel that something wasn’t right,” Ko recalled. “When he asked to be sent back to Japan, guards took him away. Our family never had a dinner together in North Korea.”

Five years later, Ko saw her stepbrother for the next and last time, on a family visit to the mental hospital where he’d been taken.

“There were dirty people with long hair kept in iron cages like in a zoo,” she said, wiping away tears. “I hid behind my mother, but I could see them. Many crawled on their hands and feet like animals. All my life I’ve had to live with that image.”  [LA Times]

Make sure to read the rest about what a traumatic experience this family went through after being lured to North Korea by the Chosen Soren also known as the Chongryun (Chongryon).  The Chosen Soren is notorious in Japan providing gambling & drug revenue to Pyongyang.  They are also well known for their spying activities that includes leaking a classified document to the North Koreans about the country’s SM-3 missile defense system.  The final straw with the Japanese public was when they were linked to the abduction of Japanese citizens who were sent to North Korea.  This is all why it was good to see these thugs get cracked down on by the Japanese government and they are nearly bankrupt as an organization now.

By the way I wonder if Chongryon is regretting its endorsement of Barack Obama yet considering the solid stance he has taken on North Korea since his election?