This essay reveals the reality of Cho Jong-rak and “Nakdonggang,” a covert organization directly tied to North Korea, brought to light through an investigation into Associate Professor Byun’s background.
Through Jang Yong-un’s testimony, the abduction of Minoru Tanaka, Chongryon connections, and Cho’s career in anti-South operations, it exposes the deep darkness of the North Korean network in Japan and the danger hidden within Japanese society.

2019-06-16
In this written testimony, Mr. Jang confessed that in 1972 he entered this organization through Cho’s introduction, and under Cho’s instructions took charge of procuring operating funds, guiding infiltrating agents, and carrying out the practical work of various operations.

The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
When one examined the background of Associate Professor Byun, astonishing facts came to light.
In November 1998, he married a woman who was also Zainichi.
At first they lived in a condominium in Izumisano City near the research institute, but later moved to Nada Ward, Kobe.
The writer went to this address, and found a mansion standing on a 50-tsubo lot in a prime area of Kobe with Mount Rokko looming nearby.
When asked, a neighborhood real-estate agent said, “It would be no less than 1.5 million yen per tsubo.”
It is a two-story reinforced-concrete house, and underground there is a built-in garage with space for two cars.
Looking at the registry for this address, the house was built in January 2001.
However, it is not owned by Associate Professor Byun alone, but jointly by four people, his wife and her parents as well.
That makes it rather complicated.
For example, as for the first floor of the building, four-fifths belongs to the wife’s father and one-fifth to the wife’s mother.
As for the second floor, Associate Professor Byun and his wife each own one-half.
As for the basement, the wife’s parents, Associate Professor Byun, and the wife each own one-quarter.
As for the land, the wife’s father holds four-fifths ownership and the wife’s mother one-fifth.
In building it, Associate Professor Byun as the son-in-law may have contributed part of the funds, but in reality it was probably the wife’s father who built this house.
The man who is the father of Associate Professor Byun’s wife is called Cho Jong-rak.
It is a name known rather well in some circles.
That is because he was the boss of a secret operational organ directly under North Korea called “Nakdonggang.”
The existence of Nakdonggang came to light when a man named Jang Yong-un, now deceased, who had been an activist in Chongryon, contributed a written testimony to the January 1997 issue of the monthly magazine Bungei Shunju.
In this written testimony, Mr. Jang confessed that in 1972 he entered this organization through Cho’s introduction, and under Cho’s instructions took charge of procuring operating funds, guiding infiltrating agents, and carrying out the practical work of various operations.
And he revealed that Nakdonggang had also gotten involved in the abduction of Japanese.
In June 1978, Mr. Minoru Tanaka, who had been an employee at a ramen shop in Kobe, suddenly disappeared.
Mr. Jang disclosed the fact that Han Yong-dae, now deceased, and Cho of the same organization conspired together, sent Mr. Tanaka out from Narita Airport to Vienna, and abducted him to North Korea by way of Moscow.
Han was the owner of the ramen shop where Mr. Tanaka had worked.
This written testimony created a great sensation.
Takeshi Nagase, representative of the Hyogo branch of the National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea, and Mr. Kazunori Okada filed criminal accusations with the Hyogo Prefectural Police against Han in October 2002 and against Cho in July 2003 for abduction for the purpose of removal abroad and related offenses.
Before this, Mr. Nagase and Mr. Okada, accompanied by Mr. Takao Samura, a reporter for the weekly magazine FRIDAY, went to Aomori and Yamagata where Han and Cho respectively lived.
Then, after staking them out for several days, they confronted the two men directly.
“At that time Han was living a life immersed in pachinko in Hachinohe.
When we caught him coming out of a pachinko parlor and asked, ‘What did you do with Minoru Tanaka!’ he insisted, ‘I don’t know.
It was Cho Jong-rak and Jang Yong-un who did it.
I had nothing to do with it.’
A few months later we went to Cho in Yamagata.
He was running a pachinko parlor there.
When we staked him out, he noticed and fled in his car.
When we confronted him as he came out of a public hot spring facility, Cho went wild and even broke our flash unit.
He denied it, saying, ‘It was Han and Jang who did it, I have nothing to do with it,’ but he did let slip that ‘Minoru Tanaka went to Austria on JAL,’” said Takao Samura, now a freelance journalist.
Another related person also testified that “Cho said, ‘We put Tanaka Minoru on JAL.’”
But in the end, this accusation seems to have ended in ambiguity.
According to Mr. Nagase, there has not even been any notice saying that “it was not prosecuted.”
I record here the career of Cho Jong-rak.
Cho was born in Osaka in 1938.
Born into extreme poverty, he even spent a period making charcoal deep in the mountains of Tamba.
He took part in the formation of Chongryon in 1955.
After serving as an instructor in the headquarters propaganda department and working at the Nada branch of Chongryon, he appears to have been engaged in operations against the South, that is, against South Korea, by the mid-1960s.
Around 1968, he served as head of the organization department of Chongryon’s East Kobe branch and also of its Amagasaki West branch.
In 1974, he is said to have been involved in the so-called “Mun Se-gwang incident,” in which a young Korean resident in Japan attempted to assassinate President Park Chung-hee and the First Lady was killed.
In 1975, he helped Han travel to North Korea by an illegal route crossing back and forth over the Sea of Japan.