Thursday’s Sankei led with the finding that customs authorities at Haneda Airport seized in April about 100 blank passports issued by North Korea that a senior official of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) attempted to bring into the country upon returning from Pyongyang via Beijing. Because Chongryon is a de-facto DPRK embassy that issues passports to Korean nationals, it is suspected of smuggling passports bearing no names, photos, or other information into Japan in the past.