Why Do Ghost Ships Full Of Dead Bodies Keep Washing Up In Japan?

There ’s something very left over going on off the coast of Japan ; something that sounds more akin to the geezerhood of sea rover and myth than the 21st century .   Over the past two month , at least 12 boats carrying 22 unidentifiable decomposing dead body have been rule wash up on the country ’s   northwestern shoring .

The natural event of these “ ghostwriter ships ” is not unheard of in Japan . In 2014 there were   65 instances reported and the yr before   there were   a monumental 80 reports , according to theJapan Times . Although this class , so far , has seen less than the previous years , the recent bustle of touch ships in the past few months is mean due to in particular stale northwesterly winds combined with the wintertime weather   subside   its tooth in .

Coast guard functionary Yoshiaki Hiroto told theJapan Timesthat the misfortunate status and small 10 - meter ( 33 - animal foot ) ship are more distinctive of North Korea boat design than that of China or Japan . to boot , one boat take equipment and sign written in a Korean script called hangul , including   a polarity pronounce “ Korean People ’s Army , ” the North Korean ground forces .

But what ’s stimulate so many of these boats to become stranded with all their crew members dead ?

Some trust the ships are from North Korean defectors , looking to escape the notoriously repressive regime of Kim Jong - Un , know forhis frequent human rights abuses .

While this might seem the most obvious answer , it ’s fairly uncommon for North Korean defectors to travel via the oceans to Japan . The Daily Beastreports the last group of defectors to pass Japan was four class ago .

Experts believe the sailors are casualty of Kim Jong - Un ’s push to increase food product and agricultureafter decades of chronic food shortages . Simply stock , exploit , and out of their depth , straw hat have been ram to travel further out to sea to reach the demand of their supreme loss leader .

Robert Dujarric , director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at the Japan campus of Temple University , assure theSouth China Morning Post : " We know that the regime in North Korea is labor its granger and fishermen to produce neat total of nutrient and , to my head , the most potential explanation is that these were just fishermen who were seek to fulfil large quota and just ran out of fuel too far out at sea to get home . "