Skeletal remains of 8 people found in wooden boat washed up on Japanese beach

Bodies that had been reduced to skeletons were found on Monday in a small wooden ship that washed up on a beach in northern Japan, the country's coast guard said.

The coast guard said it was working to establish thenationalities of the people whose remains wereon the ship.

The bodies of two males, similarly partly skeletonized, werealso found overthe weekend on the western shore of the Sea ofJapan island of Sado.

Although the nationalities of these two have not yet beenestablished, what appeared to be North Korean cigarettes and life-jackets with Korean lettering on them were nearby, thecoast guard's Sado station said.

Both local police and the coast guardsaid the two may have beenfrom North Korea.

Monday's discovery occurred on a beach 70 kilometres north of a marinawhere police last week found eight men who said they were from North Korea. Police said they appeared to be fishermen whose boat, found nearby, had run into trouble.

'Dangerous' seasonal weather

Experts say North Korea's food shortages could be behindwhat is potentially a series of accidents involving North Koreanships.

"North Korea pushes so hard for its people to gather morefish so that they can make up their food shortages," said Seo Yu-suk, research manager of North Korean Studies Institution inSeoul.

Small and old North Korean ships that sail beyond itscoastal waters are vulnerable to bad weather, he said.

Yoshihiko Yamada, professor at Japan's Tokai University,said fishermen operating in the Sea of Japan have just entered a season of hostile weather conditions.

"During the summer, the Sea of Japan is quite calm. But itstarts to get choppy when November comes. It gets dangerous whennorthwesterly winds start to blow," he said.

A total of 43 wooden ships that were believed to have comefrom the Korean peninsula washed up on Japanese shores or wereseen to be drifting off Japan's coast from January to Nov. 22this year, compared with 66 ships for the whole of last year,the coast guard said.