Story of a North Korea fisherman

By Chang Se-moon

No, I am not a fisherman from North Korea. However, the horrible life of fishermen there is foremost in my mind. Recently, my imagination was so real that I woke up feeling as if I were a fisherman from the North. This is my waking story told as that fisherman.

I live in a small town on the east side of North Korea between Wonsan and Hamhung. The water where I fish is called the East Sea by my people. I was also told that the sea was called the Sea of Japan by the Japanese people.

My only family is my wife and two small children. Neither I, nor my fellow fishermen in the village, have any idea of what is going on outside our village. We are told by Communist Party local leaders that America is our enemy and we must always be prepared to fight it. These same leaders also tell us that we should be grateful to our Chairman Kim Jong-un because people in South Korea are living a terrible life.

Until four or five years ago, we were given rice every day so that we could eat. Since then, we no longer receive rice from our government. We were told that it was because bad America placed sanctions on our country. This was when I and the other males in my village really increased our efforts to catch more fish to feed our families.

Our fishing boats are very small. We have no navigation device and only a small tank for fuel. We can only go 20 to 30 kilometers from the shore.

One day, we saw what appeared to be hundreds of fishing ships, far larger than ours, coming toward us. I vaguely recalled what was whispered among our village people. Chairman Kim had a money problem. He sold the fishing rights in the waters off North Korea to China. This was as early as 2004.

The economy of my country has been getting rapidly worse. From about 2017 and afterwards, we began to see more fishing ships new to us. We also heard rumors that these Chinese fishing ships turned off their transponders so that they could not be tracked. We had no idea why people did such bad things.

We also heard rumors that the Chinese government gave money to their fishermen so that their ships could go farther out to fish. I always wondered why the Chinese fishing ships came all the way to the east side of Korea facing Japan, rather than fishing on the west side of Korea facing China.

When the fleet of large fishing ships came too close to us, we were forced to move our tiny boats further away from our shores. Then we heard them talking in the Chinese language and we knew then that these were Chinese ships. We suddenly realized that all the rumors circulating in our village were true.

You see, our fishing boats are all wooden. They are about five meters long with no restroom or place to sleep. Because we are so poor, we share one boat between five to 10 of our villagers. We had seven men in our boat, including myself.

The Chinese fishing ships appeared at least 10 times larger than our boats. We were outnumbered by so many big ships. We had no choice but to move away from our shore. These ships were so aggressive that they could easily sink our boat if we did not move quickly.

Soon, we lost track of where we were. Our fuel was almost gone, not enough to take us back to our village even if we knew which direction we should go. We ran out of food and drink as we drifted along with the flow of the tide.

Seven of us in our boat looked at one another and chatted in a voice barely audible. Why are we here? Is there anyone in the world who cares about us? Will our Chairman Kim save us? Will South Korea do anything to save us? Is America really as bad as we were told so many times?

Days passed ― breathing stopped for one and then another. We had no choice but to throw each friend overboard when he stopped breathing. No one who was still breathing shed a tear. We knew this would soon be our own fate.

I thought about my family; my wife, our two small children. By now, they would be standing on the shore and looking at cold waters, seeing small boats appearing on the horizon with lots of fish. They were so hungry that they would not know whether what they were seeing was their hopeful imagination or, more likely, a hallucination.

Finally, all my comrades in our little wooden boat were gone, and my turn came. As my spirit was leaving my weakened body toward the blue sky, I thought I heard people around me speaking the Japanese language.

P.S. According to July 22 article by Ian Urbina who is leading “The Outlaw Ocean Project,” in 2019 “more than 150 of these macabre vessels washed ashore in Japan, and there have been more than 500 in the past five years.” (

https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/china-illegal-fishing-fleet/

)

Chang Se-moon (changsemoon@yahoo.com) is the director of the Gulf Coast Center for Impact Studies.