Japan protests N. Korea boat in waters
TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tuesday that Tokyo has lodged a protest with Pyongyang over a collision between a North Korean fishing boat that illegally entered Japan’s exclusive economic zone and a Japanese patrol boat, pledging to step up measures against foreign poachers.
Japanese authorities on Monday rescued about 60 North Korean fishermen who were thrown to the sea after their ship collided with a Japanese Fisheries Agency inspection vessel and sank in the economic zone off the country’s northern coast.
Abe told parliament Tuesday that the authorities helped the fishermen onto another North Korean ship and let them go rather than arrest them on criminal charges because evidence of illegal fishing was lacking.
But Abe said that doesn’t mean Japan is looking the other way.
“The government of Japan will continue to respond resolutely to prevent illegal operations by foreign fishing boats inside of our exclusive economic zone,” he said, adding that Tokyo protested to Pyongyang through a diplomatic channel in Beijing.
Japan and North Korea have no diplomatic ties. The two countries have disputes over Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, as well as North Korea’s nuclear and missile development and its abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s. Abe has been pushing for his first summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to resolve the abduction issue.