North Korean ‘ghost ships’ and US$700 million heist on the high seas

It was a macabre discovery – hundreds of battered wooden fishing boats, some carrying human remains, washed up on the shores of Japan and Russia. Investigators found that all the boats originated from North Korea. But what happened to the crew members? That question is what Global Fishing Watch set out to answer. The independent monitoring group’s Senior Data Scientist Jaeyoon Park eventually revealed a deep-sea heist of historic proportions.