"The fund will help bring the lives of the compatriots in the afflicted area back to normal and greatly encourage the Koreans in Japan," North Korea's official news agency, KCNA, reported Oct. 29.

Separately, the impoverished North's Red Cross donated $30,000 to its Japanese counterpart to help its relief operations, KCNA said.

About 650,000 Koreans live in Japan, many of them descendants of workers forcibly brought to the country during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula.

Many of them support the communist North. Pyongyang in turn strives to cultivate relations with those Koreans, a source of investment and tourists for the isolated North.

Despite the regime's financial trouble, Kim Jong Il regularly donates "educational funds" for Korean children in Japan.

It was unclear how many Koreans were hurt by the Oct. 23 6.8-magnitude earthquake that killed 36 people, injured more than 2,000 and left 85,000 living in temporary shelters.

(Economic aftershocks on Page 9)

The Japan Times Weekly: Nov. 6, 2004
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