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Japanese Coast Guard has recently warned over 800 North Korean fishing vessels to leave Japanese waters; may demonstrate Tokyo is finally addressing maritime domain awareness – and aims to address North Korean “ghost ships” ... first started arriving, loaded with corpses, three years ago. The body ships are still coming, however. To date, Japan seems powerless to prevent the penetration of North Korean vessels deep into its waters.

Several wooden boats, some carrying skeletons, have mysteriously washed ashore in Japan in recent weeks. Authorities are still investigating where the so-called "ghost ships" came from, but experts say all signs point to North Korea. The Japanese coast guard on Thursday recovered one decrepit vessel drifting off the western coast of Matsumae town on the northern island of Hokkaido. Ten men found aboard the wooden ship identified themselves as North Koreans and said they were taking refuge at an island nearby due to rough weather... The Japanese coast guard has detected 59 cases so far this year of boats and...

Shizuo Kakutani sees no great mystery in the things that wash ashore in Monzen, his quiet fishing village on the Sea of Japan — the fishing boats ravaged by fierce winter storms, the Chinese garbage carried to land by the strong winds, the occasional body that drifts in from Yaseno, the nearby cliffs notorious for suicides. The ghost ships, however, are harder to explain. On an early morning in November, the 71-year-old retired fisherman received a call from his colleagues at the town's civilian coast guard. A black mass bobbling in the water — most likely a boat — had...

An unsettling mystery has washed up on Japan’s shores. Over the past two months, at least eight wooden boats have been found in the Sea of Japan on or near the coast, carrying a chilling cargo — the decaying bodies of 20 people, Japan’s coast guard told CNN. ll of the bodies were badly decomposed and “partially skeletonized” — two were found without heads — and one boat contained six skulls, the coast guard said. The first boat was found in October, then a series of boats in late November. Coast guard officials are now trying to unravel the riddle...

Japan: Kim Jong-Un's Fishing Edict Behind Corpse-Filled 'Ghost Ships' Mystery by Frances Martel 17 Dec 2015 When dozens of ships carrying decaying bodies began to wash ashore near Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, theories abounded regarding who were on the ships, where they were coming from, and what led to their deaths. Japanese officials are now saying they believe they have solved the mystery: the ghost ships belong to North Korean fishermen, urged by dictator Kim Jong-un to brave unreasonably dangerous weather for a bigger catch to bring home to the North Korean military. While similarly-constructed ships - often boasting barely-visible Hangul...

The waters just west of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge hide a graveyard of sunken ships. By some estimates, there are 300 wrecks in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area alone. But only a fraction of them have been seen by scientists. Marine archaeologists and researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have set out to document those lost vessels. Over the course of a five-day survey that just ended yesterday (Sept. 15), the team discovered the sites of at least four wrecks: the 1910 SS Selja shipwreck, the...

The ghost ships of Mothball Fleet: Incredible pictures of abandoned Navy war ships taken by crew of illegal squatters They are the Navy ships that heroically fought in World War Two, now slowly rotting in a San Francisco bay. And as they are being towed, one by one, for scrapping, in just a few years they will all be gone. A group of illegal squatters gained unprecedented access to the vessels by rowing at night for two years past security and climbing onto the ships, sleeping secretly on board for days at a time. And as these stunning images show,...