Mysterious Corpse-Filled 'Ghost Ships' Found Drifting Off Japan

[riversedge]

Source: HuffingtonPost



Mysterious Corpse-Filled 'Ghost Ships' Found Drifting Off Japan
The boats appear to have come from North Korea.

Ed Mazza
Overnight Editor, The Huffington Post

Posted: 12/01/2015 04:26 AM EST

Nearly a dozen wooden boats carrying decomposing bodies have been found in the waters off the coast of Japan over the past two months.

Inside the 11 vessels were at least 25 bodies, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK. Two bodies were headless, and one boat contained six skulls, .............


One of the boats had a tattered banner that looked like it could have been part of a North Korean flag. The boat also had a board with .......................

"They are made of wood and are old and heavy," Yoshihiko Yamada told NHK. ......................


.................."I would say that defectors would be the most likely explanation, and the fact that there have been so many cases in such a short space of time is worrying because it suggests there is serious instability just below the surface in North Korea," Jun Okumura, a visiting scholar at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs, told the Telegraph.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/japan-ghost-ships_565d53e3e4b072e9d1c31702?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000017

[fasttense]

1. How horrible. n/t

[dlwickham]

2. or maybe the North Korean government is behind this

headless bodies and skulls?

[yardwork]

14. Sounds like refugees from NK who died at sea.

[JDPriestly]

20. Headless???

[jberryhill]

28. If they were not all mutilated

Then one explanation would be a shortage of rations.

[JDPriestly]

29. Unfortunately, that was my thought too. Very ugly no matter why it happened.

[morningfog]

26. Bodiless?

[randome]

3. Isn't this what happened just before the original Godzilla made his first public appearance?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]“If you're not committed to anything, you're just taking up space.”
Gregory Peck, Mirage (1965)[/center][/font][hr]

[Agnosticsherbet]

4. I remember the Vietnamese Boat People in the 70's

Things must be very bad for people to take such desperate acts to escape.

[Moostache]

5. Sounds like the plot of a bad movie...

Bram Stoker's Dracula Part 2 or something awful like that.

In all seriousness, if the North Korean government is executing people, decapitating them and setting their bodies adrift it is no joking matter. Everywhere I look these days its a world gone mad. I get the feeling we are all going to witness something really bad in the coming years as climate change really begins impacting the regions most vulnerable to it and you have to believe that a place like North Korea, being so isolated and cut-off, is going to be a canary in the coal mine...

[valerief]

7. Why would they waste a ship, even an old one, to set them adrift?

Why wouldn't they just burn them? They wouldn't be found if they did that. Or did they want them to be found? If so, why?

I agree. Bad movie plot.

[riversedge]

8. NK reported another 100 yr drought last summer:-(

[yardwork]

15. I imagine that they were refugees who died at sea.

Their bodies decomposed while the boats floated in the current.

[riversedge]

30. but strange some were decapitated.

[yardwork]

31. I think that would happen naturally as the bodies decomposed.

[Sunlei]

6. those are old fishing boats, nets and hooks and lights to fish squid & someone killed the crews.

All the countries out there are doing a lot of killings at sea, it must be horrible to be a fisherman from NK. All the other countries probably target them first.

[getagrip_already]

9. not sure what headless has to do with this...

Just an aside, but why do people get so freaked out over decapitation? The french thought of it as a humane way to execute prisoners. very quick. There are many, many, worse ways to die.

Anyway, it has nothing to do with the ships other than it adds a little mystery.

I don't think nk is known for piracy, and if it were a gov't killing I would think they would have just shot them and been done with it. There is no real political purpose to leaving them adrift never to be seen again. This was just brutality for some unknown reason. Probably criminal more than political. definitely bizarre.

[marshall]

11. To me it implies an unnatural death

They might be mistaken for unlucky emigrants who were fleeing the horrors of North Korea but got lost at sea and starved to death, if not for the fact that some of them are headless and others are body-less.

[jberryhill]

27. Or the food situation became desperate

[dembotoz]

10. cause of death would be important to know

remember stories where countries would shift people from other areas and put them on farms
sort of a massive resettlement.

thinking china under mao
cambodia under the kmer rouge
russia under stalin

and not to be too political would should add prison work farms in this county

[haele]

13. I'd also be worried about diseases.

I wouldn't put it past a superstitious culture that believes that the outside world infects their "perfect society" to get rid of a plague-stricken segment of their population by killing them and then setting their bodies adrift on old boats.

They might also be sending the bodies foreigners of Asian descent that had died in their work-camps out of the country rather than bury them in-country; in such a case, the officials sending them out may believe that beheading would be a method to hinder identification and buy them time.

Haele

[dembotoz]

25. yeah

disease struck me too.

remember stories about middle ages how diseased animals were catapulted into fortresses

[Spitfire of ATJ]

12. Sounds like pirates.

[GeorgeGist]

16. Last week's news.

http://www.news.com.au/world/appearance-of-ghost-ships-off-coast-leaves-japanese-puzzled/news-story/9bc7b80aab080152fdee942bae8e87f8

[cindyperry2010]

17. oh

my lord how awful

[DemoTex]

18. "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" comes to mind.

Edgar Allan Poe

[Ivan Kaputski]

19. Both horrible and creepy.

[Liberal_in_LA]

23. Yes

[thereismore]

21. Maybe this is how Li'l Kim gets rid of inconvenient people. nt

[JI7]

22. strange

I can believe the govt killed them but i can't see any they would put them out like that.

Maybe it was some in govt or even others want the world to know and trying to hurt the govt.

[Thor_MN]

24. Thus starts the zombie apocalypse...