Somali Pirates Hijack DongWon Tuna Fishing Boatff

A South Korean fishing boat with 25 Asian crew has been hijacked by armed pirates off the coast of Somalia, officials said on Wednesday.

The crew included eight Koreans, nine Indonesians, five Vietnamese and three Chinese, the foreign ministry said.

The 351-ton Dongwon-ho No 628 was captured early on Tuesday while it was operating with two other South Korean tuna ships owned by Dongwon Fisheries in international waters, the ministry said.

The ship was taken to a village near the Somali port of Obbia, Dongwon said, adding there were no reports of any of the crew being harmed in the incident.

”We are trying to contact them,” a foreign ministry official told reporters.

Both Dongwon and government officials have not received any demands from the hijackers, he added.

The waters around war-torn Somalia are among the most dangerous in the world, with heavily armed gangs prepared to venture far offshore to attack vessels.

Dongwon officials said their ship was hijacked by eight armed men on two motor boats and that a sister ship reported the seizure.

In a brief radio contact with the ship’s base in the southern port of Busan, captain Choi Sung-Sik said that all crew members were safe, they said.

United States (US) and Dutch warships in the region tried to intervene but withdrew after the crew was threatened with guns and the ship entered Somali territorial waters, Yonhap news agency said.

The warships were responding to a radio distress call by the vessel, which reported it was fired upon some 100km (60 miles) off the coast of Somalia, Yonhap said.

The hijackers said they were legitimately hunting down illegal fishing boats.

The first negotiation with the hijackers ended with no tangible results, the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Seoul said on Thursday.

”They presented the conditions,” a ministry official said on condition of anonymity. “The agent working for the Korean side had negotiations with them late on Wednesday night, Korea standard time (KST). But it failed to reach an agreement over the conditions.”

The two sides were to hold the second round of negotiations at 2 p.m. (KST) on Thursday, he said.

The official did not specify what the conditions were. But he indicated that ransom is what the kidnappers have in mind. “You can guess what they want, judging from the past abduction cases that have happened in that area,” he said.

Last year alone, Somali insurgents attacked 35 vessels passing through or fishing in the economic water zone where the Korean trawler was hijacked. But there were no reported casualties from those assaults as all of the crew were set free after paying a ransom.

The official did not elaborate who the “agent” is. But he said that “the agent is in a position that can influence the kidnappers.”