North Korea-linked boats carrying corpses turn up off Japan

Over the past two months, the Japanese coast guard has been towing in gruesome finds off its western shores: fishing boats filled with nets, hooks, and, in some of the boats, decomposing corpses, NBC News reports.

It is unclear where these boats – which reportedly started to show up in October – came from, but the Japanese coast guard believes they hail from North Korea.

They drift into seas near Japan by the dozens every year, ghostly wrecked ships thought to come from impoverished North Korea. He said evidence suggests the boats are from the Korean Peninsula, though he declined to identify the country.

Coast Guard officials said today they have found at least 11 shoddy boats carrying the bodies of unknown nationality since late October.

While some have hinted at something more sinister, highlighting North Korea’s past use of “spy ships” to keep tabs on Japan.

“There’s no doubt that these boats are North Korean”, John Nilsson-Wright, head of the Asia program at the Chatham House policy institute, told CNN after looking at pictures of the boats.

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.

“Some of the boats belong to Korean People’s Army fishery stations, possibly operating to catch sailfin sandfish”, said An Chan-il, who served in the North’s army as a junior officer before defecting to South Korea in 1979 and now heads a private thinktank on North Korea in Seoul.

An expert told NHK that the boats are similar to ones used by North Korean defectors.

“They are made of wood and are old and heavy”, Yoshihiko Yamada told NHK.

Because the boats are wooden, have primitive engines, and lack any modern navigation equipment, even a minor miscalculation could have turned deadly for those on board.