NORTH KOREA’S FISHING FLEET QUIET LAST YEAR, CNN REPORTS

The number of North Korean ships in the country's "dark fleet" fishing for squid plummeted in 2020, new data shows, likely depriving the impoverished country of a popular staple during a year when food supply was already dangerously low.

Research from nonprofit Global Fishing Watch found that the number of aggregate days North Korean vessels spent squid fishing in Russian waters dropped 95%, from 146,800 to 6,600. Squid fishing in North Korea's own territorial waters also suffered a massive decline, Joshua Berlinger reported for CNN.

The ships are referred to as part of North Korea's "dark fleet" because they do not publicly broadcast their location or appear in public monitoring systems, often in violation of global maritime regulations.

Dozens of these ships, which are poorly equipped to travel long distances, have washed up on Japanese shores in recent years, sometimes with dead crewmen aboard.

Jaeyoon Park, a senior data scientist at Global Fishing Watch, said the unprecedented decline appeared to be due to the stringent entry and exit controls North Korean leader Kim Jong Un put in place to keep COVID-19 out of the country.

Experts believe Kim sealed North Korea's borders last year because he knows Pyongyang's health care infrastructure would be overwhelmed by a coronavirus outbreak.

North Korea says it has not contracted a single case of COVID-19, a claim most experts dismiss as propaganda.

But the country has seemingly been spared from a major wave of infections, thanks in part to stringent anti-epidemic measures, controls on the movement of people and the border lockdown.

It has also reduced trade with China by 80%, fueling talk about severe food shortage in North Korea.

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