Japan's Kyodo news agency said Saturday that police in Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's main islands, arrested three crew members of a North Korean fishing boat on suspicion of plundering a remote fishing hut.
 
The boat has been impounded since November 30th, two days after being spotted washed ashore on an uninhabited island off the town of Matsumae.
 
The Hokkaido police have since been questioning the ten member crew, who had remained aboard the wooden boat near Hakodate port.
 
Kyodo said that on Friday the crew tried to escape police custody by cutting the ropes tethering their boat to a Japanese coast guard vessel.
 
They were on the loose for about an hour, but the vessel was recaptured later that day.
 
The crew is suspected of damaging and stealing property such as electronic appliances valued in the tens of thousands of dollars from the remote island hut.
 
Some of the property was found on their fishing boat.
 
According to the Kyodo report, the fishermen told Japan Coast Guard officials that they left the port of Chongjin in northeastern North Korea in September to go squid fishing in the East Sea before their steering wheel failed about a month ago.