(Newswire.net — December 2, 2015) — It appears that Japan has strange visitors on its shores. The visitors are actually ships that somehow strayed and showed up in Japan, carrying dead bodies on board. Japan’s coastguard reported more than ten of these ships in the past month. They were spotted in the north-west part of the coast. The ships look horrible with only skeletons aboard without any signs of what might have happened to them. There were some items like fishing nets or some signs probably written in Korean, but still nothing conclusive that could reveal what happened and how they got to Japan. The identities of the victims are also a mystery. One possibility is that they might be North Korean defectors who were trying to reach Japan to seek asylum and the other is that they were just simply fishermen who strayed due to severe storms. At present, it seems that Japanese authorites are considering the latter assupmtion.
“We know that the regime in North Korea is pushing its farmers and fishermen to produce greater amounts of food. In my mind, the most likely explantion is that these were simply fishermen who were trying to fulfill large qoutas and simply ran out of fuel too far out at sea to get home”.- Robert Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University’s Japanese Campus, told the Chinese newspapers.
The ships look like ordinary fishing boats and according to the Japan Times, they did not have GPS nagivation. If they were at sea for too long, without food and water, it is quite possible that they may have starved to death, but since the bodies were decomposed to great extent, the cause of death could not be detrmined. More ghost ships appear during prime perod for squid, king crabs and sandfish, which are very valuable products. In North Korea, around 40% of the polulation is undernourished and under Kim Jong Un’s leadership, food production was pushed to boost. It seems that he has made new reqirements for fishermen to catch more fish for export to China, being just one of the ways to get foreign currency. Knowing that, it is possible that fishermen undertake greater risks while trying to fulfill qoutas and get killed on the way.
There are also analysts who are in favour of the first theory, that these pepole are defectors who wanted to run away from hunger, poverty or from political situation in the country. If Japanese auhtorities solve the mistery soon and publish thier findings, maybe the ships will stop appearing on their shores.