Ten bodies found on Japan coast opposite North Korea

TOKYO: The badly decomposed remains of 10 people have been found on Japan’s coast across the sea from North Korea, along with the wreckage of two boats, officials said yesterday.

The discovery comes just days after a group of eight fishermen, who said they were from North Korea, washed up on the same shore.

Police said two cadavers were found in separate places on the edge of the surf on Sado island, some 750km from North Korea across the Sea of Japan.

The bodies had begun to putrefy and had nothing to identify them, senior local police official Hideaki Sakyo said.

However, he said, there were boxes of North Korean tobacco as well as boat parts and life jackets with Korean script nearby.

A wrecked wooden boat with squid-fishing equipment was also found on the coastline.

Coastguard officials spotted eight bodies inside a battered wooden boat off northern Akita prefecture.

They said high waves had prevented officials from investigating since the boat was first spotted on Friday.

Television footage showed a wrecked vessel with an eight-digit number on it, which washed up on Oga peninsula on Sunday.

“Nothing else was found on the beach nearby. So far, we have not found anything” that suggests a definite link with North Korea, a coastguard spokesman said.

Dozens of North Korean fishing vessels wash up on Japan’s coast every year. Sometimes, the boats’ occupants have died at sea, a phenomenon local media refer to as “ghost ships”. AFP