fishing
FILE PHOTO: A North Korean patrol boat near Sinuiju can be seen circled in red. (Daily NK)

Two fishing boats attached to the North Pyongan Province branch of the Ministry of State Security were recently seized by North Korean military patrol boats after they illegally left port in violation of COVID-19 quarantine regulations.

The matter has been handed to the State Emergency Anti-epidemic Command, which is investigating the case.

According to a Daily NK source in North Pyongan Province last Thursday, two fishing boats attached to the North Pyongan Province branch of the Ministry of State Security illegally departed port in the early morning hours of July 26, reportedly with the permission of cadres connected to the local Ministry of State Security.

The two boats had been assembled near Hadan-ri, Sinuiju, and Cholsan County.

The provincial branch of the Ministry of State Security has long secretly permitted its fishing boats to illegally set sail around holiday time to secure seafood for holiday provisions. This time, the ministry permitted the two boats to secretly leave harbor ahead of the July 27 “Victory Day” holiday marking the armistice that ended the Korean War.

The captains of the vessels — believing they could not take on many crew members because they needed to operate under the radar — took their boats to sea crewed by high school-aged relatives.

However, the two vessels were soon discovered by coastal patrol boats of the North Korean navy.

Believing the vessels to be Chinese fishing boats using the cover of darkness to illegally operate in North Korean waters, the patrol boats issued warnings by loudspeaker and made their approach.

When they discovered the boats were in fact North Korean, the patrol boats immediately seized and detained them.

The high school students who were aboard were sent home, while the captains and remaining crew were handed over to the military’s security department.

Circumventing the provincial quarantine authorities, the military’s security department used its own internal reporting network to directly notify to the State Emergency Anti-epidemic Command in Pyongyang that the boats had illegally left port and were carrying minors.

With the infraction taking place amid the implementation of North Korea’s “maximum emergency epidemic prevention system” – which calls for bolstered patrols along the DMZ and national borders and in the nation’s seas and skies – the authorities took the matter quite seriously for allegedly “sowing chaos in quarantine efforts and poor discipline in maritime supervision.”

The State Emergency Anti-epidemic Command immediately headed to the scene to begin efforts to investigate everyone involved in the incident, the source said. 

The State Emergency Anti-epidemic Command reportedly presented Yellow Sea maritime supervision agencies with plans to strongly punish those who turned a blnd eye to illegal activity of this sort during the “spring” fishing season of April to July. It also called for an increase in the number of signatures needed to leave port for the sea from 13 to 17 for the “autumn” fishing season of August to October.

The authorities also issued a special warning that boats caught with students onboard as seasonal labor for the autumn fishing season would be confiscated. Anyone caught in such a scheme would be barred from entering the sea for a year or — in serious cases — subjected to criminal punishments, the source said. 

The source said that the State Emergency Anti-epidemic Command also believes the North Pyongan Province branch of the Ministry of State Security to be “a unit sowing chaos in quarantine efforts and poor discipline in maritime supervision.” As a result, it has decided to report its compiled investigation findings directly to the organizational department of the Ministry of State Security’s headquarters in Pyongyang. 

Many North Koreans now worry that the matter will encourage the authorities to intensify their oversight of maritime activities, the source claimed. 

“People working in the fisheries sector are anxious that once Pyongyang ascertains what happened here, maritime oversight regulations will be intensified in not only the Yellow Sea, but in all the nation’s seas,” he said. 

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