PYONGYANG, March. 28 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Tuesday blasted Japan over its crackdown on pro-DPRK organizations last week, vowing not to stand for such infringements.

    The Japanese authorities will have to accept serious consequences of their sinister actions, the official Korean Central News Agency quoted a spokesman for the DPRK's Foreign Ministry as saying.

    Last Thursday, Japanese police searched six places including the Osaka Prefectural Association of Koreans in Commerce and several homes owned by Koreans, who are allegedly connected with the abductions of Japanese citizens by the DPRK from the 1970s to 1980s.

    The spokesman also denounced the Japanese government for retracting a measure that allowed the exemption of "several important facilities of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan from municipal property tax."

    The spokesman said the move abandoned the promise that the Japanese government treated Koreans in Japan in a friendly spirit and would not discriminate against them under the DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration.

    "The suppression of such dignified organizations and Koreans in Japan...is an unpardonable infringement upon the sovereignty of the DPRK", said the spokesman.

    There are almost 700,000 Koreans in Japan, most of them are descendants of slave workers kidnapped in Korea and taken to Japan during its 40-year colonial rule.

    At the 2002 DPRK-Japan summit, the DPRK confirmed that it had abducted 13 Japanese. Five people were allowed to return home and Pyongyang said the remaining eight had died. But Japan suspects some of them maybe still alive and has demanded definitive proof of their deaths.

    The abduction issue has been the top item in recent rounds of normalization talks between the DPRK and Japan in Beijing, but progress has not been made over the issue. Enditem