By Kim Young-jin
A group of 31 North Koreans arrived by boat at the South Korean border island of Yeonpyeong Saturday after apparently being adrift at sea, officials said Monday.
But they have not expressed intentions to defect to South Korea, staving off speculation that they might be North Korean refugees or “boat people” fleeing the North.
The 20 women and 11 men aboard the wooden fishing boat remain in the South for questioning. None expressed any desire to defect, an official of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Yonhap News Agency.
The group apparently approached the island on a wooden fishing boat Saturday morning, where they were spotted through the fog by South Korean military personnel and towed to the western port city of Incheon.
The members of the group are associated by work and not family. There were no children with them, according to the official who did not speak for attribution because an investigation is still underway.
Another military official said authorities are looking into the possibility that the boat had been adrift at sea after setting the wrong coordinates or losing power.
The group is believed to have departed from the North’s port city of Nampo, located on the west coast some 60 kilometers from Pyongyang.
Investigators are looking into how the boat managed to slip across the tense maritime border, which has been the site of various naval incidents between the two Koreas since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Tensions between the sides soared to their highest point in decades when the North shelled Yeonpyeong in November, killing two marines and two civilians.
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