North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il reportedly ordered the seizure of all Japanese-made cars in the country, according to Seoul's Yonhap News Agency.
The order reportedly came after Kim spotted a broken-down model blocking a road in central Pyongyang.
North Korean state media have also been attacking the Tokyo government for cracking down on cash remittances to the communist nation by pro-Pyongyang ethnic Korean residents in Japan.
Kim "saw a Japanese car that wasn't working blocking the road and gave a National Defense Committee edict to seize Japanese cars," a source familiar with the North was quoted as saying. The commission is the North's highest decision-making body led by Kim.
Under Kim's order, all Japanese cars are to be seized or banned from the streets, except for ones given as gifts to secret service agencies, prestigious movie stars and athletes, Yonhap reported.
"It remains to be seen whether the authorities will be able to implement them fully, because most of the cars operating in North Korea are Japanese," Yonhap said. There are no accurate records on how many Japanese-made cars are in the North.
North Korea has blamed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for recent restrictions on pro-Pyongyang ethnic Koreans in Japan (Chongryon), calling it an "unpardonable infringement" of North Korean sovereignty and a "crime against humanity."
Japan restricted remittances by Chongryon members to North Korea, delivering a major blow to the isolated country's moribund economy, which has depended on cash infusions from residents in Japan. Tokyo has also banned the Mangyongbong-92, a North Korean ferry that served as a major trade conduit between the two countries, from entering Japanese waters.
Cash sent by Chongryon businessmen had been a major source of hard currency for the North. Pyongyang often demands the residents in Japan who have relatives in the North to send cash, effectively holding their family members as potential hostages.
Regarding Chongryon, North Korea declared that Abe "has taken the lead in all the criminal anti-Chongryon campaigns in a bid to destroy it during the tenure of his office. The Abe group will have to pay dearly for this," the North's Foreign Ministry stated.
"The Japanese public security authorities mobilized hundreds of heavily armed policemen and even armed vehicles more than 10 times till early in this month to carry out search operations against at least 30 Chongryon-related facilities including offices of Chongryon branches, Korean schools and houses of Koreans," the ministry said in a statement.
As recently as last month, Japan 's police arrested an ethnic Korean engineer on suspicions of transferring advanced technologies to the North.
About 600,000 ethnic Koreans live in Japan, many of them descended from the 2 million Koreans brought to Japan as forced labor during Tokyo's 1910-1945 colonization of the peninsula. Of these, about 80,000 are pro-North, while 220,000 support South Korea and the rest are neutral.
