Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, swindle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi, and today I'm

talking to Ian Urbina about his latest project, which is really pretty astonishing. Ian has been

with the New York Times for over 20 years. He's a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter

whose work has been

nominated for an Emmy. His initial outlaw ocean reporting took him across 14 countries and five oceans.

And his latest project, in partnership with NBC News, reads like an international action,

adventure, murder mystery. It begins with an investigation into ghost boats, boats drifting

at sea with the emaciated bodies of North Korean fishermen that eventually wash up on the shores

of Japan. Over five years, 500 of these small vessels have been discovered. The financial crime

aspect of the story includes illegal fishing and sanctions violations,

but there's a whole lot more going on. And Ian is an excellent storyteller, so I'll turn this over

to him. Ian, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. How did this story first come to

your attention? The oceans are vast, and though I know you're a real expert in this

field, this is a pretty specific story in a very small region of the world. Yeah, so this was sort of a

convergence of two mysteries that I was hearing about from separate parties.

There were academics on the one side who were talking about the fact that the squid stock globally,

the amount of squid at sea around the world, was going up. And that was largely because of overfishing of the types of fish that eats squid, and that was meaning that there

was more squid to procreate. But in this one patch on the planet, namely the East Sea or the

Sea of Japan, which is between Japan and the Crayan Peninsula, there was a precipitous decline in squid and to the tune of 70, 80%.

And that was a real mystery. The second mystery was coming from a different sort of community, which was law enforcement community.

And they were somewhat mystified by the hundreds of dead bodies of North Korean fishermen, specifically, that were

washing up on Japanese shorts. And the going theory there was that Kim Jong-un in North Korea was

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