http://www.boston.com/dailynews/357/world/Flotsam_adds_to_suspicion_that:.shtml

Flotsam adds to suspicion that ship sunk by Japanese may have been North Korean spy vessel

By Gary Schaefer, Associated Press, 12/23/2001 16:54

TOKYO (AP) The label on a life jacket and the writing on a candy bag found Sunday added to suspicion that a trawler sunk in a clash with the Japanese coast guard may have been a North Korean spy ship, Japanese officials said.

The bodies of two crew members were recovered near the spot where the vessel sank Saturday. One man was wearing a life jacket with a Korean label, Japan Coast Guard official Shigehiro Sakamoto told a news conference Sunday. An empty candy bag with Korean writing was found in the other man's pocket.

It was not immediately known whether the articles were manufactured in communist North Korea or democratic South Korea, which share the same language.

Autopsies were planned for Monday to determine whether the men committed suicide to avoid capture a characteristic of past North Korean intelligence operations.

In 1998, an alleged North Korean spy submarine got tangled in a fishing net off South Korea. All nine crew members were found dead, having shot themselves in an apparent suicide pact.

Saturday's incident began when the trawler, which apparently was carrying little fishing gear, ignored orders from a Japanese coast guard cutter to stop for inspection and instead sped off toward China. The six-hour pursuit ended with an exchange of machine-gun fire between its crew and Japanese patrol boats.

Fifteen crew members were seen bobbing in rough seas after the vessel slipped under the waves so quickly, authorities said, that it may have been scuttled.

Even before the chase across the East China Sea reached its climax, Japanese defense officials and analysts studying photographs of the unidentified boat said they suspected that it might be carrying intelligence operatives from North Korea.

They noted that it closely resembled two suspected North Korean spy ships that were detected off the western coast of Japan in March 1999 but managed to elude their pursuers. Both were rigged as fishing boats but were built to move at high speeds.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and other Cabinet officials have not commented on the identity of the boat.

''It's deplorable that we have a situation in which vessels that are armed and suspicious are lurking off the coast of this country,'' Koizumi told reporters.

North Korean state media have been silent about the incident.

The trawler bore Chinese markings, and media reports Saturday said that some Japanese officials initially believed it might belong to Chinese smugglers.

But Zhang Qiyue, a spokeswoman for China's Foreign Ministry, was quoted by official media as saying the boat was not Chinese.

Zhang said Beijing was ''concerned'' about Japan's use of military force in waters near China and would ask Tokyo for more information about the incident, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency said.

Japan and North Korea are divided by history and ideology. Japan took over the Korean peninsula in 1910 and ruled it as a colony until 1945. North Korea's official media regularly lambastes the Japanese government for harboring militaristic ambitions.

-- Anonymous, December 24, 2001