Ghost ship: North Korean fishing trawler presumed scrapped returns from the dead | NK News
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October 09, 2026Oct 09, 2026

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Ghost ship: North Korean fishing trawler presumed scrapped returns from the dead

DPRK television broadcast footage of Sam Chon Li 1 more than three years after it vanished from ship-tracking systems

A large North Korean fishing vessel supposedly scrapped years ago reappeared last month, state media showed, renewing uncertainty over just how well ship trackers can monitor the country’s commercial fleet.

The ship in question is the Sam Chon Li 1 (IMO 6807967), a 3,800-ton trawler that last broadcast over its automatic identification system (AIS) in late 2018 with an unknown destination, according to maritime intelligence platform MarineTraffic.

MarineTrafficrecords show the ship is either “decommissioned or lost,” suggesting it had been scrapped. The ship also only appears in the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) “advanced” search function, which an IMO spokesperson