By Seo Soo-min
Staff Reporter

SEOUL - A delegation of pro-Pyongyang ethnic Koreans in Japan will arrive in Seoul April 6 to meet with their long-lost kin.

The Korea National Red Cross (KNRC) announced April 4 that an 80-member delegation of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chongryon, comprising 72 elderly family members, six supporting personnel and two journalists, will make a six-day visit to South Korea at the KNRC’s invitation.

In Seoul, the delegation will attend a welcome dinner hosted by KNRC president Suh Young-hoon, and leave for their ancestral hometowns April 7, spending the next three days visiting family members they have not seen in more than half a decade and paying tribute at deceased family members’ burial sites.

Of the visitors, 62 are in their 70s and 80s. Some of them migrated to Japan due to economic difficulties, while others were sent to Japan for forced labor during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule.

For the past several decades, they have been unable to return due to ideological differences which split the Korean community in Japan apart.

The delegation is led by Chae Hong-yol, 80, head of the Chongryon teachers group. Among the visitors are Ryo Song-kun, 73, vice-president of the Chongryon Chamber of Commerce Federation who has conducted economic cooperation projects with North Korea and Han Sul-ryong, 78, advisor to the Korean Chamber of Commerce in Miyaki Prefecture.

Since last year, the South Korean government has allowed Chongryon members to visit homes in South Korea without having to change their nationality to South Korea. Two home visits have already taken place in September and November last year.