The Justice Ministry is planning to step up immigration controls at local airports and seaports in fiscal 2004 by introducing teams of officers skilled at detecting fake currency and travel documents, ministry officials said Saturday.

The ministry's Immigration Bureau will also work with other ministries to reinforce screening of all North Korean-registered ships entering Japanese ports, the officials said.

Immigration authorities reported the discovery of fake currency, passports and visas on 1,739 occasions between January and June, a 42 percent increase from the same period last year, the bureau said.

Arrivals on international flights have been on the rise at local airports, where scheduled or chartered services have been increasing in recent years.

But unlike Narita and Kansai airports, the nation's two biggest international gateways, these local airports are not fully equipped with screening facilities.

The ministry is planning to install the screening teams at Narita airport, east of Tokyo, and Kansai airport near Osaka, and they will be dispatched to local airports as needed, the officials said.

Controls at seaports are also considered inadequate. The ministry currently has 72 immigration outposts at seaports, cut from 103 in 1981 as part of the government's administrative reforms.

Screening measures at seaports need to be improved because North Korean-registered ships make about 1,400 port calls per year and Japanese authorities suspect that some of the vessels have been used to ferry spies, drugs and fake currency into Japan, the officials said.

Roughly half the calls are at Maizuru port in Kyoto Prefecture and Sakai port in Tottori Prefecture, and the Immigration Bureau is planning to focus its efforts on tightening controls at these ports.