Japan gets jitters ahead of ferry visit

A North Korean delegate runs toward anti-North Korean demonstrators in front of the main press center at the World University Games in Daegu yesterday. Five North Korean delegates, including journalists, scuffled with South Korean protesters who said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il lives in luxury despite his country's poverty. PHOTO: REUTERS

Police evacuated about 80 families yesterday after suspected bombs were found in southern Japan as protests intensified against a controversial visit this week by a ferry from North Korea.

Several Japanese newspapers received telephone calls on Saturday night saying bombs were planted at a bank run by ethnic Koreans and at the office of a pro-Pyongyang group in the southern city of Fukuoka and that a gun was fired at the bank's head office in Okayama in west Japan.

The callers said the acts were aimed at protesting a visit by a North Korean ferry, Mangyongbong-92, which is due to arrive in northwest Japan today, a police official said.

The Mangyongbong-92 ferry is to visit the port of Niigata for the first time in seven months today, two days before the start of six-country talks in China over North Korea's nuclear program.

A previous visit planned for June was abandoned after a massive Japanese security clampdown and opposition by local residents and right-wing activists.

Police in Fukuoka said they found suspicious Thermos bottle-like containers near the local branch of the pro-North Korean General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) and near the local branch of the Chogin-nishi credit union, a bank run by ethnic Koreans.

Around 80 families were evacuated early yesterday until a police bomb squad removed the containers from the sites, a Fukuoka police official said.

Police said they were analysing what was in the containers.

In Okayama prefecture, police found a bullet hole at the entrance of the head office of the same credit union.

There were no injuries in the incidents, which followed a similar bomb scare and gunshot last month in Niigata.

The North Korean ferry is the only direct passenger link between Japan and the communist state.

The two have no diplomatic ties and their already tense relationship has been frayed further by a diplomatic spat over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Anti-North Korean sentiment has also risen in Japan since Pyongyang admitted last September to kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies. Five abductees, three of whom are from Niigata, have since returned.

The cargo-passenger ship is scheduled to leave Niigata Tuesday morning to return to its home port of Wonsan on North Korea's east coast, with some 100 tons of cargo and 200 passengers, including students at a pro-North Korea university in Japan.

"Inspections of all the cargo have been done without a problem," said Kim Jon He, spokesman for the Niigata branch of Chongryon. "Now we are praying that the ship will be able to depart without problem."

A Niigata police official in charge of public safety said, "The size of the police force [to be dispatched] will be very large."