The sea sometimes leaves only mysteries. Especially the seas around the Hermit Kingdom
Wooden boats filled with decomposing bodies hinting at DPRK origins have been washing ashore in Japan. The boats appear to be full of fishing equipment, including tangled cords and netting, and fishing hooks, but little in the way of hull numbers, ship’s logs, flags or documentation.
Worse, it seems no one has reported these boats missing in the first place.
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, according to footage from Japan’s NHK Television. Tattered cloth was found aboard the vessel that appeared to come from the North Korean flag, the video showed.
Defectors and experts say fishing boats under the command of the Korean People’s Army may have succumbed under pressure from Kim to catch more fish, drifting off course and ill-equipped for rough seas.
From Stars and Stripes:
Abandoned ships washing ashore aren’t especially uncommon – 65 were found last year and 80 the year before, the coast guard told Stars and Stripes. However, the groups of ships landing so closely together and the state of some of the bodies — two of which were missing heads, per media reports — are raising questions about what may be happening in North Korea.
Some have suggested the ships were part of a coordinated defection, but Kim Jin Moo, a senior researcher from the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul, strongly doubts it.
“They don’t seem to have gathered together and have been saying ‘Let’s [flee] by ship,’ ” Kim said.
