North Korea has compiled a list of Japanese nationals who remained there after the end of World War II, and of the Japanese wives of pro-Pyongyang Korean residents of Japan who moved to the North under a 1959-1984 repatriation project, sources say.

The Japanese government appears to be aware of the list, the sources said on Thursday. A delegation of officials from Tokyo is traveling to Pyongyang in the hopes that the North's special investigation committee on the matter will convey its findings to them.

Since North Korea launched a new investigation in July into all Japanese in the country, including abductees and other missing Japanese suspected to have been abducted, the committee has been compiling a list of Japanese residents by visiting them, based on registers kept by security institutions and relevant committees across the country, according to the sources.