This essay traces the structure of suspicion surrounding Associate Professor Byun through his background, his parents’ activities in Chongryon, his ties to Kakyō, his upbringing in Korean schools, and his human and financial connections to North Korea.
It sharply questions the national-security vulnerabilities of university research institutions and the reality of operations that exploit the openness of Japanese society.

2019-06-16
He belongs to Kakyō, which Japanese public security officials even regard as “a spy group that has supported North Korea’s nuclear missile development,” and both of his parents were Chongryon activists, with at least his mother being thoroughly devoted to Chongryon.

The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Last December, the writer visited the same institute in order to interview Associate Professor Byun, but was effectively refused with the single remark, “Please go through general affairs,” and instead spoke with the deputy director of the institute.
According to him, on February 19 of last year, a certified notice arrived in the associate professor’s name from the Minister of Justice stating that “if you enter North Korea, you will not be able to re-enter Japan.”
When the institute questioned him about the matter, Associate Professor Byun is said to have replied, “I did not think such a document would come.
To begin with, I did not think it was such an important document.
I have no intention of going to North Korea, and I have never gone there.
I have not provided any information to the North.”
Needless to say, this too is an answer from the country of “plausible lies.”
Furthermore, when he was asked to submit his past official travel history, it was confirmed that he had traveled many times to South Korea, and also to China, Italy, the United States, and elsewhere.
His specialty is reactor physics and nuclear education.
According to the deputy director of the institute, “He is not only excellent as a researcher, but also an extremely fine educator.”
Indeed, on the website of the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, it is recorded that in 2014 and 2015 Associate Professor Byun received awards for two consecutive years for having the highest number of citations of his English-language papers.
However, to laymen, even if one says “reactor physics,” they have no idea what it means.
So here I would like to bring in an expert who, like Associate Professor Byun, specializes in nuclear power.
It is Mr. Tetsuo Sawada, Doctor of Engineering, currently an assistant professor at the Laboratory for Advanced Nuclear Energy, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and a graduate of the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Kyoto University, where Mr. Byun presently works.
His specialty is nuclear engineering.
I asked Mr. Sawada to explain Byun’s field of specialization.
“Reactor physics is the basic discipline that all students specializing in this field study.
It studies, through experiments and computer simulation, what sort of physical reactions occur and how they behave inside a reactor designed to sustain a controlled nuclear fission reaction.
This chain reaction of nuclear fission, that is, a nuclear fission chain reaction continuing at a fixed rate, is called ‘criticality,’ and if the degree of criticality is around 1, it can be used for nuclear power generation, while if it is 2 or more, it can be used for a nuclear bomb, that is, a nuclear weapon.
People often speak of the peaceful use and military use of nuclear power, but the boundary is extremely ambiguous.”
① Associate Professor Byun was born in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, and is probably a third-generation Zainichi Korean.
His father’s background is unknown, but his mother is eighty-one this year.
She was born in Takikawa City, Hokkaido, as the eldest daughter among nine siblings.
It is said that after the “liberation of the homeland,” that is, the year the war ended, the family moved to Kyushu relying on relatives.
And it seems that she grew up in Iizuka City, Fukuoka Prefecture, watching closely the hardships of fellow Koreans working in the coal mines.
As for this part of the mother’s background, the Chongryon-affiliated local community life information paper in Kawasaki City, Tonne Dayori Kawasaki, dated October 26, 2009, with its title in Hangul, introduced her in a column called “This Person.”
I quote it below.
The mother is indicated there as “S.”
“When Chongryon was formed in 1955 and ethnic schools were opened, Ms. S also transferred into a Korean school.
Though she had to help her parents and look after her siblings, studying was enjoyable, and she always went to school first.
At that time, the high school of Uri Hakkyo, that is, ‘our school,’ existed only in Tokyo, so after graduating from middle school Ms. S went to Tokyo alone.
Although the household finances were difficult, her father and mother readily agreed, and dormitory life began.
‘What I learned at the ethnic school were language, ethnic spirit, and the conviction to live as a Korean.’
After graduation, she remained in Tokyo and began working at the Shinagawa branch.
Two years later, her family returned to the homeland, but Ms. S remained alone in Japan and continued walking the path of an activist.
Then she married a husband who was likewise an activist, and settled in Kawasaki.
Because Ms. S had no family there, the organization handled the wedding ceremony entirely for her.
‘Even now, I cannot forget that kindness,’ she says.”
Though she was raised amid hardship, one can picture the figure of a reliable woman, truly a Korean omoni.
What cannot be overlooked is that it says that the mother’s parents and siblings all “returned to the homeland.”
This probably refers to the repatriation movement from 1959 through the 1980s in which about ninety thousand Zainichi Koreans “migrated” to North Korea.
Most resident South and North Koreans in Japan originally came from the southern part of the Korean Peninsula.
However, Chongryon advertised North Korea as a “paradise on earth,” and Japanese politicians and the media joined in and fanned the movement, with the result that an unprecedented “ethnic mass migration” occurred.
According to Chongryon’s official view, it began when a movement arose among Koreans living here in Kawasaki to “return to the homeland.”
① However, the result was tragic.
Letters like cries for help began arriving one after another from returnees to the families who had remained in Japan, saying, “Please send all kinds of daily necessities, food, and Japanese yen.”
The writer thinks, “If Associate Professor Byun really is providing nuclear information to North Korea, the existence of these relatives who crossed over there may perhaps be influencing him.”
The column introducing the mother continues.
It says that just before turning sixty, she obtained a helper’s qualification.
“When she was searching for what she could do within the Korean community, she heard a lecture on elderly care.
But when she learned that there too there was ethnic discrimination, her heart ached.
‘Why, when we are all human beings?…’
Suppressing that unbearable feeling, she vowed to herself.
She would become a caregiver.
And in 2000 she obtained a helper’s qualification and did home-care work for about five years.
At that time, talk arose of launching the NPO Arirang House, and Ms. S too actively participated, making use of her own experience, and remains involved to this day.
[Omitted]”
The NPO “Arirang House” is a welfare facility that provides home care and day services for elderly Zainichi Koreans, and it opened in 2003.
Associate Professor Byun’s mother became its secretary general.
She also serves as secretary general of the “Kawasaki Koryo Longevity Association,” which promotes fellowship and交流 among elderly compatriots, and is an all-out activist, actively speaking at Chongryon-affiliated human-rights seminars and the like.
Associate Professor Byun was born under just such a mother.
The writer visited the family home in Saiwai Ward, Kawasaki City, where Associate Professor Byun grew up.
The surrounding area is one corner lined with small houses, and the single-story house, said to be a rental, is only about sixteen tsubo, though it appears neat, perhaps because it has been renovated.
The nameplate bears the name of Associate Professor Byun’s mother.
I pressed the intercom, but there was no response.
When I asked in the neighborhood, I was told that the mother “entered a special nursing home several years ago,” and that Associate Professor Byun sometimes visits the empty house on holidays.
Apparently the young Byun had a reputation as a “gifted child,” but it was said that he had almost no association with the Japanese in the neighborhood, and both his parents and the boy Cheol-ho had only the level of greeting relations with them.
His father seems to have had a job that took him out and brought him home at regular hours, but no one knows what he did.
Associate Professor Byun has a younger sister, who is said to have remained in the United States where she studied abroad.
It is said that the mother is still of Korean nationality even now.
Associate Professor Byun too must have been of Korean nationality in his childhood, but at some point changed to South Korean nationality.
It has been pointed out that “South Korean nationality makes it easier to travel abroad.”
Given that he belongs to Kakyō, which Japanese public security officials even regard as “a spy group that has supported North Korea’s nuclear missile development,” that both of his parents were Chongryon activists and that at least his mother is deeply attached to Chongryon and critical of Japanese society, and that Associate Professor Byun too was raised in Korean schools and probably had little interaction with Japanese people in his early years, it is only natural that he should have strong ties to North Korea.
Furthermore, there is this fact.
“Byun received research encouragement grants of 700,000 yen each in fiscal 1997 and fiscal 1999 from the special foundation ‘Kim Man-yu Science Promotion Association,’ now the Seiwa Memorial Foundation, for his research papers in his specialty, reactor physics,” says Ken Kato, representative of the Asia Investigation Organization.
This foundation was established in 1977 by Dr. Kim Man-yu, a Zainichi Korean physician who operated hospitals in Tokyo, for the purpose of supporting research by Zainichi researchers.
Dr. Kim had deep ties to the North, including investing 2.2 billion yen in 1986 to establish a hospital in Pyongyang.
Seo Seok-hong, Seo Pan-do, and Ri Eitoku have also received grants from this foundation in the past.
But the connection with the North did not end there.

This installment continues.