Japan’s Caution over North Korea's Ghost Ships Lets China Off the Hook

Peter J. Brown

Security, Asia

Questions must be raised as to why Japan has not intercepted North Korean vessels more aggressively, or protested China's role in their appearance.

The announcement by the Japanese Coast Guard that it has recently warned over 800 North Korean fishing vessels to leave Japanese waters would appear to demonstrate that Tokyo is finally addressing the deficiencies in its maritime domain awareness – and aims to address  the latest round of so-called North Korean “ghost ships” that first started to appear, with corpses on board, three years ago. The bodies are still coming ashore, however. And whether Japan likes it or not, it is powerless to prevent the penetration of North Korean vessels deep into its waters.

For now, there appears to be no real threat to Japanese security posed by the vessels or the men on board, despite evidence in some instances of murky connections to the North Korean military. There is nothing to suggest, for example, that the ships are serving any covert purpose – whether surveillance of Japanese ports and harbors or other missions of a military nature.

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Still, this second wave of North Korean “ghost ships” seems different and is unacceptable for reasons that may not have applied when the first wave appeared.

The fact that so many vessels have managed to come ashore is noteworthy in and of itself, especially in light of Japan’s prior experience with North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens using vessels that went undetected both by the Japanese coast guard and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force.