Eight North Korean men whose wooden fishing boat drifted to northern Japan last month will leave the country on Tuesday for China en route to their home country, sources said Monday.
The eight men, currently in an immigration center in Nagasaki Prefecture, will be taken to Kansai airport aboard a Japan Coast Guard aircraft before leaving the airport for China aboard a civil aircraft, according to the sources.
When their boat washed ashore on a beach in Yurihonjo, Akita Prefecture, on Nov. 23, the men told Japanese authorities they were fishing for squid before the boat's engine failed and they wanted to return to North Korea.
The men were taken to the immigration facility on Dec. 2.
In recent months, a number of unidentified wooden boats, apparently from North Korea, as well as bodies, have washed ashore along the Sea of Japan coast.
In another case, three crew members of a North Korean fishing boat that drifted to Japan were arrested Dec. 9 on suspicion of plundering a fishing hut that they had taken refuge in on an uninhibited island in northern Japan.