Published on December 8, 2019.
Continuing from the previous chapter, this chapter introduces Yoshihiko Yamada’s essay “The Sea of Japan in a Rapidly Changing Crisis.”
It discusses North Korean fishing fleets entering the Yamato Bank, Chinese fishing fleets and maritime militia, the collision between a Fisheries Agency patrol vessel and a North Korean fishing boat, restrictions on police power on the high seas, North Korean drifting boats, the reorganization of Japan’s maritime security system including the Japan Coast Guard and the Maritime Self-Defense Force, and the urgent need to establish Japan’s defense posture.

December 8, 2019.
At a time when Japan must establish its defense system as quickly as possible, the opposition parties led by the Constitutional Democratic Party are making a fuss over such things as the Cherry Blossom Viewing Party, and Asahi Shimbun, NHK, and others are following this up.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Japan’s threatened seas.
Along with military pressure, North Korea is also strengthening its advance against Japan in the field of fisheries.
North Korean fishing fleets are sweeping over the rich fishing grounds in the central Sea of Japan known as the Yamato Bank, behaving as if they own them, and driving Japanese fishing boats out of the fishing grounds.
The Yamato Bank lies within Japan’s EEZ, and if vessels from other countries conduct fishing there, they need permission or agreement from the Japanese government.
However, North Korea is entering this sea area without permission and fishing there, with enough force to seem likely to exhaust squid and other marine products.
Most of this fishing is carried out by the method known as drift-net fishing, in which nets are set where there are currents and fish and shellfish carried by the current are caught all at once.
Because this method causes overfishing and bycatch, it is a fishing method being increasingly regulated worldwide.
Furthermore, drift-net fishing also catches crabs.
From a North Korean fishing boat seized by Russia, 600 kilograms of crabs were found along with six tons of squid.
The crabs appear to be smuggled into China and South Korea.
North Korea seeks only its own immediate interests and is trying to exhaust even the fishery resources of other countries’ waters.
However, North Korean fishing fleets are not simply fishermen.
In North Korea, where economic sanctions continue, ship fuel is expensive, and it is also difficult even to obtain.
Fuel is placed under the control of the military, and fishermen who receive instructions from the military go out to fish in the Sea of Japan.
At times, commentators who claim to be knowledgeable about North Korean affairs speak plausibly, saying that because squid fetch high prices in North Korea, fishermen colluding with the military go out as far as the Yamato Bank in pursuit of profit.
However, when the advance of North Korean fishing boats into the Yamato Bank is analyzed from the perspective of maritime issues, this information appears to differ from the facts.
It is true that squid fishing has become something of a boom in North Korea.
However, that refers to squid caught along the coast and traded raw.
In fact, the photographs and videos shown by North Korea commentators depict squid being landed raw, which is a different kind of fishing from that conducted at the Yamato Bank.
From the North Korean mainland to the Yamato Bank is about 500 kilometers one way, making a voyage of more than 1,000 kilometers round trip.
It is a two-day voyage one way, and the fuel costs are high.
Because North Korean fishing boats do not have refrigeration equipment, they cannot bring the squid back home raw.
Therefore, they process it into dried products on board.
Processing requires labor and time, but dried products cannot be expected to fetch high prices.
It is an unprofitable form of fishing.
However, if the military provides the fuel and labor that is almost free is used, fishing at the Yamato Bank would be possible.
It is reasonable to think that fishing at the Yamato Bank is carried out under military control by order of the North Korean government.
Since this summer, North Korean fishing boats have begun to claim that the Yamato Bank lies within their own EEZ.
In August, an incident occurred in which crew members of a small North Korean boat pointed the muzzle of a rifle at a Japan Coast Guard patrol vessel in the Yamato Bank waters.
And inside North Korea, it has been announced that Japanese patrol vessels carrying out unlawful crackdowns were driven out of North Korea’s EEZ.
Furthermore, North Korea has sold to Chinese companies the right to fish within its own EEZ.
As a result, more than one thousand Chinese fishing boats are operating in the Sea of Japan.
This Chinese fishing fleet enters not only North Korean waters but also Japan’s EEZ and continues to catch squid.
Moreover, on board this Chinese fishing fleet are more than 10,000 Chinese people in total.
Most of them have received military training, and it is conceivable that they may engage in military activities as maritime militia.
On the waters of the Sea of Japan, Chinese and North Korean fishing boats and fishermen that surpass Japanese fishing boats are present, threatening Japan’s seas.
Restricted police power on the high seas.
On October 7, an accident occurred in which a steel vessel thought to be a North Korean fishing boat that had entered the Yamato Bank waters collided with a Fisheries Agency fishery patrol vessel.
The North Korean fishing boat forcibly cut across in front of the patrol vessel, causing a collision, damaging its hull, and sinking.
The crew members of the sunken vessel were rescued by a Japan Coast Guard patrol vessel that rushed to the scene after receiving contact from the patrol vessel and the Fisheries Agency, and they were handed over to another North Korean vessel and returned home.
Upon hearing of this incident, many citizens probably wondered why the crew members of the North Korean fishing boat, which was suspected of illegal operation and had collided of its own accord, were sent back without even being questioned.
Within the EEZ, coastal states are recognized as having police power related to fisheries.
Therefore, judicial police authority limited only to fishery control is entrusted to Fisheries Agency fishery patrol vessels.
However, what the Fisheries Agency can deal with is only matters related to fisheries, such as illegal operations, and it is not recognized as having police power to respond to incidents not directly related to fisheries, such as murder, injury, or property damage occurring at sea.
It is the Japan Coast Guard that has general police power at sea, but the police power of the Coast Guard is, in principle, recognized only within territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles, about 22.2 kilometers, from the coast, or on board Japanese-flagged vessels.
There are many restrictions under international law on how a coastal state can respond to crimes on the high seas.
I would like to introduce an extremely symbolic case.
In 2002, while the tanker TATJIMA, owned by a Japanese shipping company, was sailing on the high seas off Taiwan from the Persian Gulf toward the port of Himeji, a Japanese navigation officer went missing.
In this case, there was eyewitness testimony that two Filipino crew members had killed the navigation officer and thrown him into the sea, and these two Filipino crew members were detained on board under the authority of the captain.
Under international law, police power over a vessel sailing on the high seas belongs to the flag state.
Because the TATJIMA was a Panamanian-flagged vessel, the Japan Coast Guard did not have police power on board, and the Coast Guard arrested the two Filipinos by taking the form of a request from the Panamanian government.
And because jurisdiction over crimes committed on board a vessel belongs to the flag state, the two arrested men were sent to Panama.
In the trial held in Panama, the two men recanted the confessions they had made in Japan.
Furthermore, because the eyewitnesses did not appear in the Panamanian court, the two were acquitted.
Although a Japanese person had been killed, the Japanese government could not try the suspects.
Taking this case as an opportunity, the Japanese government revised the Code of Criminal Procedure so that when Japanese nationals become victims of crimes abroad, Japan may prosecute, with the consent of the sovereign state, limited to serious crimes such as murder, injury, robbery, and forcible indecency.
However, in the present case, there was no conclusive evidence of illegal operation by North Korea, and the Fisheries Agency could not crack down on it.
Also, the collision incident amounted only to property damage, and it was outside the scope of investigation by the Coast Guard.
Furthermore, the vessel carrying the perpetrators was a North Korean-flagged vessel on the high seas, and nothing could be done.
If the present collision incident is pursued deeply, it could end up being said that the Fisheries Agency patrol vessel sprayed water at a fishing boat that was not hostile and for which there was no evidence of poaching.
Because the patrol vessel approached the fishing boat from the left, it would mean that it violated the navigation safety principle that a vessel seeing another vessel on its right must take evasive action to prevent collision.
For that reason, the Japan Coast Guard has questioned the captain of the Fisheries Agency patrol vessel.
In any case, the final cause of the accident was the collision by the North Korean fishing boat, and the fault lies with the North Korean side, but improvement in the Fisheries Agency’s patrol activities is also required.
North Korea’s intention remains in darkness.
The Fisheries Agency patrol vessel involved in this accident was a ship leased from the private sector.
The captain is a former Fisheries Agency official, but he is still a private citizen.
The only Fisheries Agency official on board was one supervisory officer.
A vessel operated by civilians is engaged in guarding border waters.
It is like a taxi driver who is a former police officer driving a patrol car.
Fisheries Agency patrol vessels are not armed.
As described above, there is a high possibility that North Korean fishing boats are armed, and it is far too dangerous to make unarmed civilians confront North Korea.
The role of the Fisheries Agency should be limited to countermeasures against poaching in coastal areas, and patrol duties in dangerous waters should be concentrated in the Japan Coast Guard.
What is troubling, however, is the purpose of the actions of the sunken North Korean fishing boat.
Because the sunken fishing boat was equipped with a new radar antenna, it can be inferred that the North Korean side had confirmed the presence of the Fisheries Agency patrol vessel.
It can be considered that it deliberately approached in order to intimidate or provoke the patrol vessel.
For domestic propaganda in North Korea, it probably acted as if a North Korean vessel had boldly challenged a Japanese patrol vessel and driven it out of the sea area.
Or it may have acted as a decoy by itself to obstruct the actions of the patrol vessel in support of illegal fishing vessels.
Now that the North Korean fishermen have returned home, North Korea’s intentions remain in darkness.
Also, this year again, drifting and washed-up boats from North Korea are appearing along Japan’s coasts.
The number of boats that washed ashore in 2018 reached 225, and from five of them, twelve bodies were found.
If these washed-up boats had been wrecked by stormy weather, more than 2,000 people would have been thrown into the sea, and many more bodies should have washed ashore.
Among the fishing boats that have washed ashore, many have engine rooms converted into living spaces, or boats that were not equipped with engines from the beginning, and there is concern that there are North Koreans illegally entering Japan.
Strengthening security in coastal areas is also indispensable.
Along with strengthening cooperation between the Coast Guard and the police, if the mission is limited to vigilance, deployment of the Maritime Self-Defense Force would also be possible.
The urgent task is to establish a maritime security system that goes beyond existing concepts.
The combined area of Japan’s territorial waters and exclusive economic zone is the sixth largest in the world.
However, there are only about 13,000 Coast Guard officers protecting this vast sea area.
Japan’s maritime security organization has fewer personnel than those of China or Taiwan.
The government is increasing the fixed number of Coast Guard personnel, but human resource development is not keeping up.
The Japan Coast Guard has about 1,000 vacancies.
A bold reorganization of maritime security organizations such as the Coast Guard and the Maritime Self-Defense Force is necessary.
At a time when China, North Korea, and South Korea, the neighboring countries of our country that Mr. Yoshihiko Yamada, one of Japan’s precious genuine scholars, points out in this laborious work, are in such a situation, in other words, at a time when Japan must establish its defense system as quickly as possible, precisely at such a time, the opposition parties led by the Constitutional Democratic Party are making a fuss over such things as the Cherry Blossom Viewing Party, and Asahi Shimbun, NHK, and others, which have continued to sell Japan out to China and the Korean Peninsula, are following this up.
This is not a mere coincidence.
It is no exaggeration at all to say that they are completely under the influence operations of China and the Korean Peninsula.