SEOUL, South Korea: When the United Nations imposed its toughest sanctions against North Korea in 2017, one of the main targets was squid.
It was one of the country’s main exports, and the Security Council hoped to stop trade, as part of the international effort to pressure the North to abandon nuclear weapons.
But squid fishing in North Korean waters has continued on a large scale, a nonprofit group that tracks commercial fishing said Thursday. And the ships that bring the bulk of the catch are not North Koreans, but Chinese: “dark fleets” who challenge sanctions by hiding their locations and identities.
Since the sanctions took effect, Chinese vessels have caught squid worth more than $ 500 million, says the Global Fishing Watch group, which advocates for sustainable fishing. That money does not go to North Korea, but ships pay the North for fishing rights, an agreement that has been in place for more than 15 years, and which still generates foreign exchange for the pariah state, despite the ban. .
In addition, the larger and better equipped Chinese ships have been pulling North Korean fishermen out of their own waters. That forces them on dangerous voyages to more distant seas, many of which end in death.
“It is the largest known case of illegal fishing by a single industrial fleet operating in another nation’s waters,” said Jaeyoon Park, data scientist at Global Fishing Watch and lead author of two reports on the subject that the group released Thursday. . .
A United Nations panel previously said that Chinese vessels were still fishing in the northern waters, despite the 2017 sanctions, which, in addition to banning the export of seafood, coal, iron ore and other resources from South Korea. North specifically prohibits the purchase of fishing rights from the Pyongyang government.
But the Global Fishing Watch reports add considerably to what is known about Chinese activity, including its connection to the deaths of North Korean fishermen in distant waters.
In recent years, hundreds of small North Korean vessels, some so primitive that they used rocks as anchors, have appeared off the coasts of Japan and Russia, most empty, but some with starving survivors on board and others with human remains.
Forty-five of these “ghost ships” were found in Japan in 2015, and their numbers have increased dramatically since then. In 2018, 225 North Korean ships were found off the Japanese coast. Last year, there were 158. Crews on empty ships are believed to have drowned or were rescued by other North Korean fishermen.
“These incidents often involve starvation and death, and many fishing villages on the east coast of North Korea have now been coined ‘widow villages,'” Global Fishing Watch said in one of its new reports, “Illuminating the dark fishing fleets in North Korea. ” It was published in the journal Science Advances.
Using satellite technology and working with researchers from South Korea, Japan, the United States, and Australia, Global Fishing Watch determined that more than 900 vessels of Chinese origin had fished in North Korean waters during the 2017 squid season. It counted 700 for 2018. The ships “do not publicly publicize their locations or appear on public monitoring systems,” the group said.
Chinese ships were estimated to have caught nearly as much squid in those years as Japan and South Korea combined – more than 160,000 metric tons, worth more than $ 440 million, according to the report.
Fewer squid are now caught in waters of South Korea and Japan because many are caught near North Korea before the creatures can migrate south, according to Global Fishing Watch and the South Korean government.
Last year, 800 Chinese vessels in North Korean waters brought squid worth $ 240 million, Global Fishing Watch said. Chinese ships have captured about $ 560 million since the United Nations sanctions took effect in September 2017, the group estimated.
“The scale of the fleet involved in this illegal fishing is about a third of the size of the entire distant water fishing fleet in China,” said Park, the scientist at Global Fishing Watch.
The group did not estimate how much North Korea had earned from the sale of the fishing rights. But the strong Chinese presence indicates that it remains an important source of illicit income for the North, as the country struggles under the absolute dominance of the Covid-19 sanctions and consequences.
A 2016 study by the Korean Maritime Institute, a group of experts in South Korea, concluded that each Chinese vessel was spending between $ 30,000 and $ 80,000 for an annual permit to fish in North Korean waters. If the numbers reported by Global Fishing Watch are correct, that would mean tens of millions of dollars per year for the North, if not more.
A more recent estimate came in March, when the United Nations panel studying sanctions compliance said an unidentified member state had reported that North Korea made $ 120 million in 2018 selling fishing rights.
The northern fishing industry has been affected for decades by its decrepit fleet and fuel shortages. The country began opening the rich fishing grounds on its east coast to Chinese ships in 2004, choosing to earn foreign currency by selling the rights rather than catching and exporting the squid, according to the report by the Korean Maritime Institute.
For years, squid has been the main catch in North Korean waters open to the Chinese, where other fish are less abundant than they once were. Chinese vessels are only entitled to fish for squid, but South Korean authorities have said they also bring other shellfish.
Even as Chinese ships trace northern waters, their leader, Kim Jong-un, has been urging his people to fish more.
State media often reported on Mr. Kim’s visits to fishing villages, where he is said to marvel at the frozen fish bullets stacked as “gold bars” and claims that “the socialist fragrance of the sea” caused his fatigue. disappear.
“I used to want to make time to sail out to sea and fish with fishermen,” the state’s Central Korean News Agency said in late 2018.
But North Korean fishermen have been unable to compete with Chinese boats, which are larger and use more powerful electric lights to lure squid at night, Daily NK, a Seoul-based website reported last October, citing a unidentified source in the North. East Coast.
Despite the dangers, many fishermen bribe government officials to obtain permission to make long-distance trips, according to Daily NK. Japan has complained that thousands of North Koreans fish illegally in its waters, and its Coast Guard has tried to repel them with water cannons.
The squid is popular in South Korea and Japan, as well as in China, where traffickers from North Korea still bring it across the border, according to deserters from the north.
The United Nations panel reported cases in which Chinese fishing vessels changed their names, or carried North Korean fishing licenses or flags, to hide the fact that they were violating sanctions. China told the panel that while it pledged to enforce the sanctions, its ability to do so was hampered by the use of forged identities by such ships.
Global Fishing Watch said that although the vessels it identified originated in China and were supposed to be owned and operated by Chinese people, they were likely to be “three no” vessels, operating without legitimate registration, flagging or licensing.
In any case, its fishing in North Korean waters is “a clear violation of the core intention” of the 2017 sanctions, Park said.
