SKorea: Grim discovery points to NKorea fishing tragedy

By Alex Jensen

SEOUL (AA) - South Korea is struggling to send eight rescued North Korean fishermen back home, but Seoul also revealed the grisly tale behind their story Thursday.

The crew claimed several of their fellow sailors had starved to death when they were found adrift off the South’s east coast earlier this week, although none of the dead were recovered according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry spokesperson Jeong Joon-hee.

It was a tragic reminder of the North Korean boats that washed up in Japan last year carrying 27 corpses in total.

In this latest case, Jeong said the surviving fishermen were discovered aboard three vessels that had been at sea for weeks -- two of which had malfunctioned while the other is believed to have collided with a Chinese boat.

All the rescued crew members apparently want to go back to their reclusive homeland, citing family concerns among their reasons.

North Korea’s regime is notorious for severely punishing the relatives of defectors, who are welcomed in the South -- however, past reports have suggested even fishermen deciding to return have been harshly dealt with.

Seoul has so far been unable to get a response from Pyongyang amid a total breakdown in inter-Korean communication in recent months due to tensions over the North’s nuclear weapon ambitions.

“We plan to send them back home on Monday,” Jeong told reporters -- but the South has been reduced to using a loudspeaker at their heavily guarded border.

Jeong added that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un could be endangering fishermen through an all-out push to acquire valuable resources for his sanctioned nation.

“[Kim] has made a rare order to spur the fishery sector in the winter time,” he said. “North Korea's fishery industry is also the main source of hard currency.”

Coincidentally, North Korea’s state-run media carried a feature Thursday of a visit by the country’s leader to a fishery in celebration of an “unprecedented” haul of fish along with sufficient stores to feed his troops until next September.