Bodies lashed to 'N.Korea spy ship'

An infrared video camera showed a boat firing a weapon, which the Japan Coast Guard says is a rocket, at its patrol boats in the East China Sea in December

TOKYO, Japan -- Japanese divers have found several bodies lashed to a sunken suspected North Korean spy ship, raising suspicion they attached themselves to the vessel to make recovery difficult, according to a newspaper report.

Japan is trying to identify the ship and its mission. Intelligence sources suspect the ship was on a spying or drug smuggling mission for Pyongyang when it sank during an exchange of fire with a Japanese coastguard vessel in December.

Tokyo wants to raise the ship to prove the boat is North Korean so it can lodge an official complaint. It also wants to cull evidence from the sunken hulk about North Korea's suspected spying and drug trade in East Asian waters.

The coast guard began a diving operation on Wednesday and has so far recovered the remains of a man from the seabed along with a gun, cartridges, a cartridge belt and a magazine near the wreckage of the ship.

Japan's Yomiuri newspaper, citing coast guard officials, said the recovered body was tied to the stern with a rope, while four other bodies, yet to be recovered, were found tied to the deck with what appeared to be rope.

The crew may have tied themselves to the vessel to ensure their bodies would not be easily recovered, making identification difficult, it said.

Sailors sometimes rope themselves to their vessel to prevent them being washed away in a storm.

Gaping hole

Divers on Saturday also recovered two weapons and what appears to be a bullet from the seabed. They also saw a gaping hole in the deck just below the bridge, raising speculation the crew may have scuttled the boat to avoid capture, the Yomiuri said.

In December, the Japanese coast guard fired on the 100-tonne vessel after it intruded into Japan's 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone and ignored orders to stop. It later sank, apparently with the loss of all 15 or so crew.

The coastguard recovered two bodies wearing life jackets bearing Korean writing.

North Korea has accused Japan of mounting a smear campaign over the vessel and threatened unspecified counter-measures, saying Japan was linking the ship to the communist North "for no reason."

The Japanese diving operation is due to end on Tuesday.

The already rocky relations between the two countries worsened sharply when North Korea launched a three-stage missile over Japan's main island of Honshu in August 1998.

They had started normalization talks in 1991, but the North broke off negotiations when Japan raised complaints that Japanese people had been abducted by North Korea. The talks resumed in 2000 but have failed to make progress.

Red Cross negotiators from Japan and North Korea held two days of talks in Beijing last week, after which North Korean Red Cross officials agreed to search for missing Japanese people.

Japan reportedly wants to raise the boat by the end of May, an act which depends on the cooperation of China, the North's traditional ally.

In March, Beijing balked at a request to salvage the vessel, asking Japan not to "complicate the situation." But Beijing has since softened its stance, and Chinese officials recently have hinted that they would not object.