Japan has not been particularly friendly to the idea of granting refugee status to those seeking asylum -- over the last decade, the country's Justice Ministry has granted only 30 of 803 requests. But even that pace has slowed -- since 1994 only one person a year has been granted refugee status and PNS correspondent Thomas Caldwell reports on what looks like an attempt to reduce the number to zero. Caldwell, a former United Press International correspondent, is a Tokyo-based writer and broadcast journalist.

TOKYO -- The one thing coming out of North Korea that the Japanese government fears more than Rodong missiles and nuclear weapons is a tidal wave of hungry refugees sweeping across the Japan Sea. That is why Japanese immigration authorities are doing everything they can to turn back a lone political exile, named Kim Yong Hwa.

In these years of famine and economic collapse, North Korea's biggest export is human beings. The refugees flow through the porous Chinese and Russian borders, seeking shelter and jobs in the Korean communities scattered across Siberia, Sakhalin Island, northwest China, Southeast Asia, the Central Asia republics and Eastern Europe. A handful like Kim have come ashore in Japan.

Nobody knows the numbers involved because governments in the region choose to turn a blind eye to the issue. Thus the Japanese courts have labeled Kim an "illegal entrant." And both the Japanese and South Korean governments claim Kim is Chinese, despite documentation and testimony showing he is North Korean.

The claim is based on an identity card that Kim says is a fake, which he obtained by bribing Chinese authorities soon after fleeing North Korea.

Kim's troubles started in 1988. While working as a supervisor for North Korea's national railroad, he was held responsible for an accident and charged with political crimes.

According to human rights groups in Japan, he would have been charged only with negligence, but the freight train -- which was delayed, not wrecked -- was transporting a shipment of "special commodities" and gold. Kim says the shipment was under the "special instruction" of then North Korean president Kim Il Sung.

Kim, certain he would receive the death penalty or life in a prison camp, decided to flee to China.

When he learned that the North Korean and Chinese police had launched a man-hunt for him, Kim left for Vietnam. In Hanoi, he sought help at the South Korean Embassy where he claims officials gave him some money but offered little else in the way of assistance.

He was detained in the Vietnamese port of Haiphong, while attempting to board a South Korean freighter. But before Vietnamese authorities could deport him to North Korea, Kim escaped back to China, where he eventually arranged to be smuggled by a boat to South Korea.

Reaching the shores of the Republic of Korea, Kim thought that he was home free. But he failed to dispose of his Chinese identification card -- a mistake that may prove to be fatal.

He cooperated through three months of interrogation by the Korean CIA. But the Seoul government decided to send him back, officially claiming him to be an ethnic Korean resident of China.

South Korean National Assembly member Kim Il Chu who met with Kim in 1996 is convinced that Kim was from the North and took him in as a house guest for two years. But Kim dropped his legal case and decided to flee to Japan -- where he was taken in to custody on April 19.

He is now detained in the city of Fukuoka, and facing deportation as the Ministry of Justice has denied his request for refugee status.

"Japan should protect him on humanitarian grounds," says Hiroshi Kato, a member of a Japanese human rights group. But as Hiroshi points out, "If he is granted refugee status, Kim will be the first North Korean political refugee in Japan."

Though the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees, Sadako Ogata, is Japanese, few exiles are granted refugee status by Japan. Ministry of Justice statistics show that in the last 10 years only 30 of 803 applicants have been granted refugee status -- and while the number of applications is growing, the number accepted is slowing. Of 242 people who applied in 1997, only one received refugee status.

In the regional power game, Kim is a pawn. But for lawmaker Kim Il Chu he is a human being.

"No matter where he ends up, he can be a contributing member of society. He's good with his hands, good with machinery, and at fixing things. He should be allowed to have a good life."