North Korea’s squid fishing operations plummeted in 2020, says the NGO

North Korea’s squid fishing operations plummeted in 2020, says the NGO

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A survey by the non-profit organization Global Fishing Watch found that the total number of days North Korean vessels spent fishing for squid in Russian waters fell by 95%, from 146,800 to 6,600. Squid fishing in North Korea’s own territorial waters has also declined sharply.

The ships are referred to as part of North Korea’s “black fleet” because they do not publicly broadcast their location or appear on public monitoring systems, often in violation of global maritime regulations. Dozens of these ships, which are ill-equipped to travel long distances, have landed on the Japanese coasts in recent years, sometimes with dead sailors on board.

Global Fishing Watch used satellite imagery and other marine monitoring technologies to track the number of squid fishing vessels during the May to November fishing season. Squid fishing is among the easiest operations to track from a distance because it is usually done at night with powerful lighting equipment.

Squid is popular throughout Northeast Asia and rising demand in recent years has threatened the sustainability of squid stocks already declining in the region, according to Global Fishing Watch. In North Korea, squid is fermented, preserved, grilled, fried or dried and served as a snack.

Jaeyoon Park, a senior data scientist at Global Fishing Watch, said the unprecedented decline appears to be due to the tight entry and exit controls that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has implemented to keep Covid-19 out of the country.

Experts believe Kim closed North Korea’s borders last year and severed the last of his few ties to the outside world because he knows that Pyongyang’s decrepit health infrastructure would be overwhelmed by a coronavirus outbreak.

North Korea says it has not hired any cases of Covid-19, a claim that most experts consider to be propaganda. But the country appears to have been spared a great wave of infections, in part thanks to strict anti-epidemic measures, controls on the movement of people and border blocking.

These preventive measures, however, have proved to be expensive. Trade between Beijing and Pyongyang – an economic lifeline that most experts believe North Korea needs to prevent its people from starving – fell by more than 80% in 2020, according to data from the Chinese customs agency published Monday. -market.
Nearly 10.1 million people suffer from food insecurity in North Korea and “urgently need food assistance”, according to an April 2020 report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Pyongyang often struggles to properly feed its people because of poor economic management, international sanctions and a shortage of arable land and modern agricultural equipment in the country. But things are almost certainly worse now because of the stricter border restrictions and heavy rains this summer that have flooded farmland and destroyed crops.
While there seems to be enough food for everyone, supply is under more pressure than at any time since the 1990s famine, according to Chad O’Carroll, CEO of Korea Risk Group, which produces North Korea publications NK Pro and NK News.

“We can safely say that there is a national shortage of several important types of food,” he said.

Russian border guards detain North Korean poachers in Russian waters of the Sea of ​​Japan in this 2019 archival photograph.

Fishing away from home

North Korean fishermen often operate illegally outside the country’s own waters due to overcrowding.

Pyongyang reportedly sold its territorial fishing rights to other countries, according to United Nations investigators, despite the fact that fishing in its waters or the North Korean fish trade violates international law.
The trade, which moved about $ 300 million a year, was sanctioned in 2017 by the UN Security Council as part of its effort to punish the Kim regime for its repeated ballistic missile tests that year.
An innovative study published by Global Fishing Watch in 2020 found that squid fishing vessels with links to China were operating in North Korean waters and displacing North Korea’s own fishing fleet, forcing many in fragile boats to sail to more seas. agitated and dangerous.
Many did not survive the journey.

Global Fishing Watch park said squid fishing in the territorial waters of Russia and North Korea fell dramatically in 2020. During the peak of the season, from September to November, Global Fishing Watch found 50% fewer vessels of Chinese origin operating in North Korean waters than before. at the same time in previous years.

The North Korean squid fishing boats, however, did not take advantage. There has not been a corresponding increase in North Korea’s squid fishing in the country’s own territorial waters, so it is likely that a large amount of North Korea’s squid supply “disappeared completely by 2020,” Park said.

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