When South Korean officials boarded a stray North Korean fishing vessel in 2019, they were confronted with 16 corpses, two suspects and an acute political dilemma.
Three years later, footage emerged of the two bound and gagged fishermen, who confessed to killing their fellow crew members, being handed over to the North Korean authorities and near-certain execution.
The resulting controversy has pitted South Korea’s conservative administration against its left-leaning predecessor, raising doubts over South Korea’s respect for human rights, how Seoul handles relations with Pyongyang, and a decades-old cycle of political revenge and recrimination.