Fishing boats carrying decomposed corpses have washed ashore in Japan in recent weeks, leading to speculation they are rickety North Korean vessels that have strayed dangerously far from port under the impoverished nation’s push to boost its catch.
There has been no mention from secretive North Korea of any missing boats, but its leader, Kim Jong Un, has put a high priority on fishing as a way of earning foreign currency and providing a sustainable food source that is not reliant on harvests and weather.
The Japanese coast guard and police reported 12 incidents of wrecked wooden boats, including some that were in pieces, on the country’s shores and waters since October, containing 22 dead bodies, including five skulls.
Japanese authorities declined to comment on the origins of the boats or the possible identities of the dead, but a hand-written sign identified one boat as belonging to unit 325 of the North Korean army. Tattered cloth was found aboard another that appeared to come from the North Korean flag.
Although Japan’s Meteorological Agency said there was not unusually bad weather in the Sea of Japan this November, the waters are rougher at this time of year due to the onset of cold, northwesterly winds.
Defectors and experts say fishing boats under the command of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) may have succumbed under pressure from Kim to catch more fish, drifting off course and ill-equipped for rough seas.
“(North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) implements policies pushing hard to catch more fishes with a small wooden vessel to supply them to local people. Each vessel has an assigned quota which should be fulfilled. I think the accident happened while fishermen tried to fulfill it,” said a North Korean defector and President of North Korea Development Institute, Kim Byeong-uk, who defected to the South in 2002.
Over the years, North Korean boats seeking the rich fishing grounds of the Sea of Japan have washed ashore in Japan as well as on the deserted beaches of the Russian Far East. North Koreans looking to defect, on the other hand, typically flee by land into China, or, less often, via coastal waters to neighbouring South Korea.
Fishing is a vital industry in a country where millions cannot find enough to eat. North Korea’s 1.2 million-strong army is heavily engaged in food production, including fishing.
Kim, North Korea’s young leader, has made boosting food production a priority for the isolated country since taking office after his father died in late 2011, and recently visited a KPA fishing station on North Korea’s east coast, calling for the facility to be upgraded, the official KCNA news agency said.
On Monday (November 30), KCNA ran an editorial from the ruling party’s official newspaper: “Rodong Sinmun Calls for Making Unprecedented Big Fish Hauls, Following Example of KPA”.
Reuters