Tokyo police on Thursday arrested the president of a Kobe-based trading company and one of its executives on suspicion of illegally exporting to North Korea a secondhand fishing boat that is believed to have subsequently been fitted out for espionage, police said.
Kim Ki Min, 52, president of Toa Gijutsu Kogyo, and 53-year-old executive Toshikazu Shimada are suspected of violating the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Control Law by submitting documents to the government stating the vessel was to be sold to Indonesia, police said.
The vessel is believed to have entered the North Korean port where two suspected North Korean spy ships fled after intruding into Japanese waters in 1999.