News of the successes and failures in the reunification of the families of five Japanese who were repatriated after being abducted to North Korea have been plastered across the front pages of Japanese newspapers in the wake of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to Pyongyang on Saturday.

But few stories covered the issue of the harassment of ethnic Koreans in Japan, which was also referred to during Koizumi's summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

A Japanese official said Koizumi told Kim that the government will deal with the issue of harassment and discrimination "in an amicable way."

But as of Monday evening, the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryun) had received dozens of threatening calls, mirroring the situation following Koizumi's first visit to North Korea in September 2002, Chongryun spokesman So Chung On said.

So said pro-Pyongyang Koreans in Japan have encountered various forms of abuse, especially since Kim admitted during the first summit that North Korea abducted 13 Japanese nationals.

In the wake of the first summit, female students of Chongryun-affiliated schools had their school uniforms slashed and business at restaurants run by Koreans was disrupted, he said.

But although Koizumi has promised action, officials say there is little that can be done at the national government level.

The most the government can do, according to a senior Foreign Ministry official, is continue calling on the public to stop harassing ethnic Koreans while getting police to step up measures to crack down on unlawful activities against them.

So said he hopes such harassment will become less rampant after Koizumi's remarks.

He said he hopes Koizumi will show his intention to respect ethnic Koreans in Japan, many of whom were brought to Japan as slave laborers during its colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945.

Insiders said that negative news reports about Japan through the official Korean Central News Agency and other North Korean state media have led to a rise in anti-Japanese sentiment there.

A North Korean official studying Japanese at Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies said about 400 students were studying the language there in the early 1990s, but the figure has dropped to around 100 in recent years.

The official, who asked not to be named, said fellow students occasionally criticize him for studying "the language of the enemy."