Arresting North Korean Fishermen

Hokkaido Regional Police arrested three North Korean fishermen with suspicion of theft on Saturday. They are doubted as stealing electric appliances from a small desert island called Matusumae Kojima, located western offshore of Hokkaido Island, where they arrived onboard a small fishing boat. The government of Japan recognized a possibility that they were the agents of North Korean government with secret operation in Japan.

It was late November when the police and Japan Coast Guard found the boat with ten fishermen in Matsumae Kojima. After the Coast Guard captured the boat, the police realized that most devices installed in a cabin, built in the island by Japanese fishery cooperatives, were disappeared. The devices included television, refrigerator, fishing implements or auto bike, which total value amounted ¥7.9 million. It is suspected that those fishermen have stolen those goods and tried to bring them to their home.

The fishermen include Captain Kan Myonghak, 45, and other two in the age of 59 or 32. Other six fishermen were brought to the immigration office and the rest of one is in a hospital in Sapporo with ill health condition. The police is going to have investigation on the rest of seven men at the immigration office. When the police arrested three fishermen in the boat alongside the pier in Hakodate Port, they firmly protested, yelling loud in Korean language. They appeared from the boat with rope around their body and brought to police office.

The arrested fishermen will be investigated in the legal procedure of Japan. If the police confirms their suspicion, they will be indicted to the court. But, there were some cases in which the police released foreign fishermen arrested in Japan’s territorial sea with insufficient suspicion. When a Chinese fishing boat intensively collided with a ship of Japan Coast Guard around Senkaku Island in 2010, Japanese government released the Chinese captain without indictment. Other seven North Korean fishermen are likely to be coercively repatriated after the investigation in the immigration office.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga insisted that the police and the coast guard were making thorough investigation on the suspects. “There is a doubt that the consecutive arrival of North Korean boats and seamen may be secret operation of North Korean government,” told Suga, indicating a possibility that the owner of those boats could be North Korean People’s Army. Some news reports indicated a possibility of refugees from the starving country. But, no sign of collapse of Kim Jong-un regime has been detected so far.