Four people believed to have fled North Korea arrived at a port in northern Japan in a small boat on Saturday and later told police they want to go to South Korea, Kyodo news agency reported. The four, a couple in their 60s and their two sons in their 20s and 30s, told police they left North Korea because life was so hard there, Japanese public broadcaster NHK said.
Japanese authorities had been questioning the four on the assumption they were seeking asylum, media reports said. If they were refugees, it would be the first time that North Koreans had fled to Japan and sought asylum directly, and could further strain ties between Tokyo and Pyongyang if North Korea demanded their return.
"I've been told that we've put under protection people believed to be of North Korean nationality," Kyodo news agency quoted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as telling reporters. "The immigration authorities will deal with it appropriately."
Japan only grants refugee status to a limited number of people each year, but a 2006 "North Korean human rights" law stipulates that the Japanese government take measures to protect and support defectors from North Korea.
Kyodo said the four spoke Korean and told police they had left from near the North Korea-China border about six days ago. They were carrying bottles that they said contained poison, suggesting they were ready to die if caught by North Korean authorities, NHK said.
A local official said a small black wooden boat, resembling a fishing boat, had entered Fukaura port facing the Sea of Japan in Aomori prefecture, 570 km (350 miles) north of Tokyo. The boat, 8 metres (26 ft) long and fitted with a modified engine and also carrying a spare engine, arrived in port soon after 4 am on Saturday, NHK said. Japan, which has no diplomatic ties with North Korea, has barred entry to ships from the North since Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006.
Tokyo is also feuding with the secretive communist state over the fate of Japanese citizens abducted decades ago by Pyongyang's agents to help train spies in Japanese language and culture. Prime minister Abe has vowed not to provide funds for a multilateral aid-for-arms deal clinched in February, by which Pyongyang promised to scrap its nuclear arms programme in return for energy aid, until the abduction issue has been resolved.
Japanese abductees who were repatriated in 2002 have said they were kidnapped by agents and taken to the North on speed boats that left from the Japanese coast on the Sea of Japan.
In December 2001, a suspected North Korean spy ship sank in the East China Sea after a high-speed chase and an exchange of fire with Japan's coastguard. Tokyo believes the vessel was used for spying or drug smuggling. North Korean defectors have in the past fled to Japanese institutions in China, but all sought asylum in third countries.