Mysterious fishing boats with decomposing bodies on them are washing up in Japan, and officials are mostly clueless as to why.
These dilapidated ghost ships are believed to have come from the impoverished nation of North Korea. It’s believed that the fishermen on the boats were straying too far from their port in an attempt to increase their catch, according to Reuters. Kim Jong Un has apparently been pushing fishery as a source of food and income in an unstable nation where many don’t have enough to eat.
CNN reports that these bizarre ghost-ship incidents have been occurring for years. A total of 283 boats have washed ashore—with 12 being found in a five-week period. Yet, the Coast Guard doesn’t know exactly what’s causing the people’s deaths.
“We think they possibly met with an accident due to the weather, but we can’t confirm as the condition of dead bodies were bad,” a Coast Guard spokesman told CNN.
Some also believe the fisherman are getting lost at sea and dying of starvation. Others believe some of these boats are manned by defectors and dissidents that are attempting to flee the country, Christian Science Monitor reports.
One thing they do know is that the boats are from North Korea—one vessel had their flag and another had text that said “Korean People’s Army.”
Though the Coast Guard claims some of the bodies underwent autopsy, their cause of death and nationalities are unclear as well.
This article was first published on Crime Feed.
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Photo: Crime Feed / NHK
