North Korean ships scramble to pack as Japan slaps ban

Japan banned all visits by ships and all imports from the impoverished communist state as of midnight Friday (1500 GMT).

Twenty-two North Korean ships were docked in Japan when the ban was announced, officials said. Eleven of them were in Sakai, which Friday snapped off a symbolic sister-city agreement with the major North Korean port of Wonsan.

"The crew members seem to be in a hurry loading lots of goods as they have to leave today," said Yasutake Nakamura, an official at the port management union in Sakai, which is in western Tottori prefecture.

In one cargo ship, crew members were working hard binding a huge mountain of second-hand bicycles to the sides on the deck board.

Seafood, second-hand bicycles and tailored suits were among the key products in North Korea's limited trade with Japan.

"Today's the last day for me to pass goods to North Korean ships. I hurried to come here," a 53-year-old trader of used tyres was quoted as saying in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily's evening edition.

From early morning, dozens of trucks entered and left without stop at a quay in Sakai for foreign ships.

Bilateral trade has already been severely restricted and subject to boycotts due to political tensions. North Korea in 2002 admitted it had kidnapped Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s, provoking fury.

"North Korean marine products are unpopular now, so they've been replaced by Norwegian and Japanese," Nakamura said.

"I've heard most marine products from North Korea have disappeared from retailers' outlets in recent weeks," he said.