Tokyo: Pyongyang's nuclear defiance is prompting fears of a backlash against North Koreans living in Japan, many of whom already face daily discrimination.
Since North Korea said on Monday it had carried out a nuclear test, schools and other facilities run by the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) have received threatening calls, sparking worries of worse to come.
"There have been no reports of serious incidents so far. But in the past when the DPRK (North Korea) did something conspicuous, some radical people resorted to violence against students at our schools," said one Chongryon official who declined to be identified. "That's why we are worried."
Reflecting such concerns, police guarded the entrances to ''Korea Town'' in Kawasaki City, near Tokyo, and residents, many North Korean, shied away from reporters.
About 6,00,000 ethnic Koreans live in Japan, many of them descended from the two million Koreans brought to Japan as forced labour during Tokyo's 1910-1945 colonisation of the peninsula.
Of those, about 80,000 are pro-North, another 220,000 support the South, and the rest back neither country, said Pyon Jin-il, himself an ethnic Korean and an expert on North Korea.
Japan granted Koreans Japanese nationality during its colonial rule, but stripped them of the status in 1952 and deprived them of many benefits enjoyed by Japanese citizens.
Many girls attending Chongryon-run schools wear traditional Korean ''chima chogori'' uniforms and hence are easily singled out.
But most Koreans, born and raised in Japan, differ little from their Japanese neighbours on the surface, speaking fluent Japanese and often marrying Japanese spouses.
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