Korean Fishermen Accuse Japanese Coast Guard of Abuse

The Japan Times is reporting that the Korean fishermen who were caught fishing in Japanese waters and were boarded by the Japanese Coast Guard, are accusing the Japanese Coast Guard of using excessive force.

Tokyo on Friday dismissed accusations that Japan Coast Guardsmen used excessive force when they boarded a South Korean boat suspected of poaching and roughed up one of its crew members.
“I think they acted correctly,” Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said when asked if the coast guardsmen had acted unreasonably.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that a member of the fishing boat crew was hospitalized with injuries after he was beaten by Japanese authorities during the confrontation Wednesday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said the coast guardsmen smashed the glass window on the door to the boat’s wheelhouse after the crew refused to unlock it and shut off the engine.

The order to cut the engine was a “necessary and minimum measure,” Hosoda said. “When the crew resisted, they got into a scuffle.”

South Korean patrol boats were summoned from off the southern city of Ulsan early Wednesday when Japanese patrol boats entered South Korean waters in pursuit of the fishing boat they said had been operating 8 km inside Japanese territorial waters.

The 77-ton eel boat Singpung-ho had refused JCG orders to stop and sailed off with two Japan Coast Guardsmen still on board. Japanese authorities contacted the South Korean Coast Guard, which helped stop the boat.

The similarities between this case and the 2002 subway incident continue. Make accusations of abuse and have pictures taken of you in the hospital to appeal to Korean nationalism to make it look like the big bad foreigners in this case the Japanese are beating down the Koreans again. A proven formula for getting out of trouble.

I would think that breaking the window of the boat to get the Captain to stop the boat would be reasonable since the boat was escaping with the Japanese Coast Guardsmen still on board. Plus when they did get in the cabin I’m sure the Captain wasn’t to helpful and resisted stopping the boat thus leading to the injuries he received. If he would of stopped the boat like he was directed he could of avoided any alledged injuries. He couldn’t do that though because then he would of been caught in Japanese waters.

So it was better to run with the coast guardsmen on board and get back into Korean waters where he knew nothing would happen to him and he could appeal to Korean nationalism against the Japanese, go to the hospital, claim abuse, and I bet he yelled “Dokto is Korea’s” at some point too for added emphasis of his innocence. I hope they make him pay the illegal fishing fine but that is about as likely as someone being arrested in the 2002 subway abduction.