Six crew members of a fishing boat that disappeared last year after sending a fake distress signal were recently sent to a political prison camp for trying to mount a defection attempt, Daily NK has learned.
“The boat that disappeared while fishing in April of last year was discovered by a navy patrol boat a few days after the crew members had sent a distress signal. After over a year of questioning, they were sent to a political prison late last month under charges of attempted defection,” a source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
The fishing boat had been involved in foreign currency-earning activities for the North Hamgyong Province branch of the Ministry of State Security. Last year, the boat had gone to sea to catch fish for families of cadres from the provincial branch of the Ministry of State Security ahead of a holiday marking the foundation of the North Korean military on Apr. 25. In the early morning hours of Apr. 20, however, the crew radioed that their boat was about to go adrift due to engine trouble. Nothing was heard from them after that.
But a few days later, a North Korean navy patrol boat located the fishing boat in open waters near Japan. Three patrol boats then mounted an operation to bring in the boat’s six crew members.
The authorities were initially unsure whether the crew members had intentionally made for Japan or were carried there by currents. In any case, however, the boat was outside of its normal operating area, which raised suspicions among navy officials involved in the case. The navy subjected them to basic interrogations before turning them over to the Ministry of State Security.
“Knowing that the fishing boat worked for the North Hamgyong Province branch of the Ministry of State Security, the navy quietly handed the crew members to the ministry’s headquarters without telling the provincial branch,” the source said. “The Ministry of State Security put all of them in the Kangwon Province branch’s lockup and carried out a year-long preliminary examination.”
Preliminary examinations include the entire interrogation process prior to suspects being indicted.
Status of several crew members cause delays in processing their case
The Ministry of State Security started to intensify its interrogations of the six when their testimonies failed to line up during the preliminary examination process. Ultimately, the ministry extracted the following confession from the six: “We were originally going to head to South Korea, but we heard that South Korea sends defectors back to the North through Panmunjom, after which they quietly disappear. So we were heading to Japan when we had engine trouble and the boat went adrift.”
All of them also confessed to sending the distress signal as a ruse to make their disappearance look like an accident, the source said.
“One of the six crew members was the descendent of a Hero of Labor, another was a descendent of a Korean War veteran, and two were fourth-generation descendents of Korean-Japanese returnees, so the preliminary examination process dragged on for a year given that high-level approval was needed to investigate them.
“As soon as the government granted its approval, the Ministry of State Security quietly moved the six to a political prison camp because there was the belief that the six could arouse anti-state opinion if it was made known that they had tried to defect.”
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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