Under the command of the Study Group, Chongryon pursued a diverse range of political and business projects. First, they held sessions on the idolization of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il for core Chongryon members and cadres in order to cement loyalty to the North Korean regime. Additionally, they established the Unification Project Department to conduct secret espionage activities and build up a united front.
Its main duties were to try and dismantle the Korean Residents Union in Japan (Mindan); to carry out “Red Propaganda” movements against South Korea; to lead united front activities disguised as overtures of friendship; to build up North Korean liaison with groups in the Northeast Asia region; and to assist North Korea directly or indirectly to purchase weapons, smuggle goods and expand its budget. While these activities were led by merchants affiliated with Chongryon and Chongryon cadres, direct instruction came from Study Group cadres.
One case where Japanese intelligence authorities caught wind of direct Study Group involvement in illegal exports was 2003, when a Japanese company, Seishin Enterprise, allegedly sold missile parts to the North Korean Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces.
Chongryon cadres belonging to study groups send money to North Korea which they accumulate with the assistance of credit unions themselves affiliated with Chongryon. In the present day, the scale of Chongryon-affiliated financial organizations is much reduced, so they cannot remit a great deal of money, but, in the past, several billion yen went to North Korea every year.
In April, 1999, at a trial in Nagoya District Court, the President of Dongmyung Trading Company, a company affiliated with Chongryon, Park Il Ho accused the Aichi Credit Union of embezzling 1.75 billion yen from the company. Through the judgment in this case, it came out how deeply the Study Group was involved in the management of the Aichi Credit Union. The judge said that officials of the Aichi Credit Union were all members of the Study Group, and confirmed that Aichi Credit Union had been performing the special task of remitting money to North Korea and providing Chongryon with funding for its activities.
The trial revealed that Park’s money had been used to try and recruit South Korean students studying in Japan and Japanese lawmakers.
Around that time, at a foreign affairs meeting of the Liberal Democratic Party, a national security official reported the existence of around 1000 study groups all over the Japan.
Then, in late 2001, former vice-Director of the Public Security Intelligence Agency Kougu Shouganuma revealed in an interview with a Japanese weekly magazine, “The reason why North Korea is able to export weapons to third world countries is that there is a place where they launder money, Japan.”
Next, in a parliamentary committee meeting of the National Security Commission in May, 2002, Seisi Maehara, a member of the House of Representatives of the Japanese Diet, revealed that the new members of the board of the rebuilt Aichi Credit Union were also affiliated with the Study Group.
Furthermore, Maehara said that Chongryon was a puppet, but that the puppeteer was the Study Group, and that former presidents of Hana Credit Union and Mirae Credit Union were also all cadres of the Study Group.
Many of these accusations were corroborated by another Korean-Japanese individual who used to be a Chongryon official. He has gone on the record as saying that credit unions affiliated with Chongryon are all dominated by the Study Group, which is a sub-organization of the Workers’ Party, and that credit union personnel management is directly in the hands of the Chosun (North Korea) Workers’ Party.
Japan’s Public Security Intelligence Agency has found that the Study Groups were closed by Kim Jong Il in 2002, but reopened in 2005 in order to resume remitting money and strengthen pro-North Korea organizations of Korean residents in Japan.
