Ghost Ships as Spectral Geography: An Introduction to North Korean Necro-Mobilities

North Koreans have always been required to work hard, to offer their bodies, spirits and lives to serve Pyongyang’s developmental ambitions and agendas. When times have been difficult North Korean citizens have had to work harder, to dig more and harvest more. North Koreans who live in coastal communities have also been encouraged by bureaucracies and institutions to extract more the seas and oceans. North Korea has often faced difficulties and in developing fishing capabilities and capacities, inspite of ambitions to become a global fishing power. North Koreans who are not traditionally fishermen, have thus set to sea underprepared, under-resourced and lacking in capabilities and many have come to grief on the high seas, and died far from their native shores. Months later their vessels have arrived unannounced and unexpected on the shores of Japan and the Russian Federation, ship intact but with a macabre crew of highly mobile dead North Koreans. These are the ‘ghost ships’ and they have provided an extraordinary challenge for regional authorities on how to manage this form of North Korean mobility. Building from work on spectral and ghostly geographies, this paper considers the mobilities and immobilities of these ships and their crews, including recent work on necro-mobilities. It seeks the spaces created for them on distant shores and the conceptual spaces their bodies create in East Asian regional politics. Finally it places them within the wider frame of active and lively materials from North Korea and the problems generated by their mobilities and immobilities.