A key man in Japan-North Korea relations — Ho Jong Man, chairman of the pro-Pyongyang group Chyongryon, or General Association of Korean Residents in Japan — appears to be about to quietly pull the curtain down on his public life. And internal strife seems to be erupting on the choice of his successor.

After the police searched Ho's residence in Suginami Ward, Tokyo, on March 26 in connection with alleged illegal import of matsutake mushrooms from North Korea by a company affiliated with the association, he spoke to dozens of reporters in front of his home, bitterly criticizing the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Japanese police.

According to a public security source, however, Ho was at his physical limit. In fact, he was hospitalized twice in March for melena caused by an ailment in his internal organs.

Moreover, a Chongryon insider said there has been an internal feud between those who would prefer one of Ho's lieutenants and those who are lined up behind Vice Chairman Nam Seung Woo, regarded as No. 2 in the organization's hierarchy.

Although Ho has stronger ties with North Korea and is more capable than Nam, this insider says, he has not won broad support from pro-North Korean residents in general.

His lack of support is attributed to his refusal to accept responsibility for the collapse of Chogin Shinyo Kumiai, a credit union affiliated with Chongryon. Another factor is believed to be his eldest daughter's role as a publicity machine for a South Korean religious cult that has victimized many Koreans.

This does not mean, however, that Nam has widespread support. According to a longtime member of Chongryon, Nam did nothing but play soccer while he was a student, and was able to land a job in Chongryon's International Bureau only because he had built up personal relations with members of the Japanese press by drinking with them.

His principal weakness is said to be lack of close ties with influential officials in Pyongyang, as he has had no experience in Chongryon's general secretariat, the contact point with North Korea's governing Workers' Party of Korea. To say the least, this longtime member says, Nam lacks Ho's ability to bamboozle both Workers' Party and Japanese politicians.

While the outcome of the succession struggle is too close to call, the Japanese public security source said that if Ho's follower becomes the next leader of Chongryon, the group's hidden connection with the North's espionage organization will be brought to the fore.

The top follower of Ho is Bae Jin Gu, another vice chairman of Chongryon. He is in fact the chief operative in Japan of Pyongyang's espionage organization, Bureau 225. He was once identified by South Korean prosecutors as delivering instructions from then-North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to a South Korean citizen, who was a spy, in Tokyo.

An important mission of this espionage organization is to create underground organizations in both Japan and South Korea to lead armed uprisings to support Pyongyang's scheme of unifying the Korean Peninsula by force.

If the chief operative engaged in this covert mission in Japan — that is Bae — were to lead Chongryon, the group could be investigated under the Japanese law for the prevention of subversive activities. It also might even alienate parents of students at Korean schools in Japan, which have traditionally supplied Chongryon with its human resources.

Chongryon's power in North Korea is waning. As a sign of this, a Korean businessman residing in Japan points out that a popular restaurant located in front of Pyongyang Station that has been run by Chongryon is about to be taken over by high-ranking officials of the Workers' Party.

This, the businessman says, shows that Ho is now so much at the mercy of his rival, Kim Yang Geon, the head of North Korea's United Front Department, which has absorbed Bureau 225, that he no longer even has the muscle to keep operating that restaurant.

The businessman says that in the past when leading Chongryon figures visited North Korea, they were greeted by high-ranking party officials and black limousines. Now, however, they are met only by a microbus with one driver.

According to a different Korean resident businessman, a shortage of money has also weakened Chongryon's position. In the past, he says, the association was able to raise several hundred million yen every time it invited a troupe of North Korean artists to perform in Japanese cities. These days, however, the association doesn't have enough of its own money to pay some ¥4 billion to resolve the problems swirling around the ownership of its headquarters building.

It is believed that when North Korean strongman Kim died in 2012, Chongryon's delegation presented only ¥4 million as condolence money at the funeral. This perhaps bears out the old saying that when poverty comes in though the door, love leaps out the window.

An informed source believes that if Ho leaves the scene, it would have no small impact not only on Chongryon itself but also on relations between Japan and North Korea.

Ho is known to have been eager to build up ties with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, specifically through Seishiro Eto, an LDP member of the Lower House.

According to an informed source, Ho instructed Nam to lay the groundwork for a visit by Eto to Pyongyang last fall. In the process of preparing for the trip, a Nam subordinate asked Eto to bring up the normalization of diplomatic relations and Japanese reparations to North Korea during talks in Pyongyang. Eto refused to go to Pyongyang under such conditions, resulting in the association's ties with the LDP through Eto being severed.

Since Abe returned to power in 2012, Tokyo's contact with Pyongyang, including over the abduction issue and other topics of dispute, has been through back channels via the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau under the guidance of the prime minister's office. The North, however, has given only terse responses that it is once again looking into the fate of Japanese in North Korea.

With Ho on the cusp of fading away, so will Japan's contact route with the North through Chongryon, which played a significant role when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi met with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang in 2002 and 2004 and which the Abe administration relied on at one time to some extent. This will mark a major turning point in the relationship between Japan and North Korea.

The organizational power of Chongryon is weakening day by day as it is being abandoned by Pyongyang, to which it pledges allegiance, its channel of communication with the Japanese government is becoming narrower and many Korean residents in Japan are withdrawing their support.

Whoever wins the fight for succession, Chongryon will drift into uncharted waters between Japan and North Korea.

This is an abridged translation of an article from the June issue of Sentaku, a monthly magazine covering political, social and economic scenes.