A famous North Korean ferry that once carried passengers from Japan to the DPRK has made a rare appearance at the country’s port closest to Russia, NK News analysis shows, which experts said may signal an intent to use the vessel to transport goods or people between the two countries

Ship-tracking data by Fleetmon locates the 413-foot Mangyongbong-92 to just 1.8 miles (3 km) from North Korea’s northeastern port of Rajin on Sept. 24. Satellite imagery by Planet Labs shows a ship with the exact same length at the same coordinates on that date. 

Tarao Goo, an open-source analyst and author for the Oryx military blogs, told NK News that the vessel has rarely moved since 2018 and “will probably get maintenance or a load of cargo” if it docks at the Rajin port.

The Mangyonbong-92 is a cargo and passenger ferry built in the 1990s using funds from the Chongryon organization of ethnic Koreans in Japan. It used to regularly sail between Japan and North Korea, but Tokyo permanently banned it from Japanese waters in 2006 in response to DPRK missile launches.

Since then, it has made just a few high-profile appearances, such as transporting 150 members of the North Korean delegation to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in 2018.

The Mangyonbong-92’s visit to the port near Russia comes less than a week after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un returned from a trip to the Russian Far East, where he met Vladimir Putin and other officials and discussed ramping up economic and military cooperation.

Rowan Beard, a tour manager at Young Pioneer Tours, noted that the DPRK conducted trial runs of a ferry route between Vladivostok and Rason, the special economic city where the port of Rajin is located, in the past for Chinese tourists.

But the tourism professional assessed that the DPRK is more likely to use the Mangyonbong-92 to transport goods than people, suggesting it’s an “all hands on deck” situation as Russia and North Korea increase trade and bolster ties.

The Mangyonbong-92 has a murky past, with rumors that the DPRK used the vessel to smuggle missile parts into North Korea and drugs into Japan back when it made regular trips between the two countries.

The vessel evokes even darker memories for some family members of those victimized by the DPRK’s “Paradise on Earth” campaign, a resettlement program that human rights advocates say lured Koreans in Japan to move the DPRK using false promises.

For Hyangsu Park, a human rights activist and former Chongryon member now living in South Korea, one of her most painful memories of visiting family in North Korea came when she traveled to the port of Wonsan aboard the Mangyonbong-92 ferry.

“[When we arrived], we could not see our uncle,” Park previously told NK News. “All the rest of the family was there, but they were like all crying. They all looked so sad, like they wanted to say something to us but they couldn’t.” 

According to Park, she later learned that her uncle had been killed in a North Korean prison camp.

Edited by Bryan Betts