Fishing Boats Used For Sale Article

Kim Ki Min, 52, president of Toa Gijutsu Kogyo, and its executive Toshikazu Shimada, 53, are suspected of violating the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Control Law by submitting documents to the government pretending the vessel was to be sold to Indonesia, the police said.

The vessel is believed to have entered a port in North Korea where two suspected North Korean spy ships fled after intruding into Japanese waters in an incident in 1999, according to security officials of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).

Kim and Shimada are believed to have played the central role in the export, they said.

They are believed to have asked Yun Kyong Jung, 51, a ship broker based in South Korea's Pusan, and others to buy the ship from its original owner. Yun was arrested last Saturday in connection with the case.

Kim and Shimada allegedly conspired with Yun as well as Yoji Kishimoto, 59, president of ship dealer Matsushima Kaiun, to illegally export the secondhand squid fishing boat to the North by pretending it was destined for Indonesia in documents submitted to the Fisheries Agency, according to police investigations. Kishimoto has also been arrested in the case.

On Aug. 6 last year, Matsushima Kaiun, based in Miyagi Prefecture in northeastern Japan, organized a crew of three Japanese to take the boat from the port of Onahama in Fukushima Prefecture, also northeastern Japan, to a fishing port in South Korea near the demilitarized zone. The boat arrived Aug. 11 via waters south of Kyushu, southwestern Japan, the police said.

The boat was then taken by a separate non-Japanese crew organized by Yun to North Korea, they said.

MPD investigators, who earlier raided the offices of Toa Gijutsu Kogyo, are investigating the background to the sale and the flow of money, the police said.

Toa Gijutsu Kogyo was established in 1963 and is involved with exports of ship parts to North Korea, while Matsushima Kaiun, set up in 1992, exports used fishing boats mainly to China, South Korea and the Philippines.

In April 1996, Hyogo prefectural police arrested an employee of Toa Gijutsu Kogyo on suspicion of smuggling to North Korea materials that can be used to produce sarin nerve gas and which are subject to export restrictions.