North Korean 'ghost ships' washed up in Japan due to China's 'dark' fishing fleet

A new study by non-profit organisation Global Fishing Watch said Thursday that North Korea ''ghost ships'' had washed up in Japan because of China's ''dark'' fishing fleet.

Japan's north coast wasthe site of a macabre phenomena in which North Korea's fishing boats were washed up on shore carrying several dead bodies, more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from their homeland.

Satellite technologies were used by the authors of the report to analyze marine traffic in northeast Asia in 2017 and 2018 and found that hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels were sailing in waters off North Korea.

Add WION as a Preferred Source

Pushing North Korea's fleet, which are poorly equipped to travel long distances, the Chinese ships appeared to be fishing there illegally.

Approximately 900 Chinese ships in 2017 and 700 in the following year violated the international law by selling North Korean fish internationally.

They caught more than 160,000 metric tons of Pacific flying squid, one of the region's most valuable seafood products, in 2017 and 2018, more than South Korea and Japan combined during the same period. The estimated catch was worth more than $440 million.

A UN report which was published in March claimed that North Korea earned an estimated $120 million in 2018 by selling or transferring fishing rights in violation of UN sanctions.

Pyongyang's fish trade was sanctioned in 2017 by the United Nations Security Council as part of its effort to punish the Kim Jong Un regime for its repeated ballistic missile tests that year. It was worth an estimated $300 million a year at that time.