This is the dramatic moment three NORTH KOREAN fisherman were rescued after spending two nights adrift in freezing waters that killed their captain.

The sailors had been fishing in the Sea of Japan near the hermit kingdom when their wooden vessel was clattered by a wave which cut the engine last Tuesday.

They drifted hundreds of miles from land before the Russian fishing trawler Peter Ilyich - named after Lenin - was passing and spotted the half-submerged ship on December 14.

Sailors frantically lowered a wooden pallet to lift the North Koreans to safety. They first pulled up the dead body of the captain, followed by one fisherman with frostbite and the remaining two. All were dressed in black.

Incredibly, when the boatswain on the Peter Ilyich radioed their destination port in Busan, South Korea, to request assistance they allegedly REFUSED to help them - forcing the ship to return to its origin in Vladivostok, Russia.

The dramatic rescue sheds fresh insight into the vast numbers of North Korean "ghost ships" found washed up on Japanese shores - the latest coming earlier this month in Niigata Prefecture with one dead body onboard.

Viktor Sidorov, head of the Russian fishing collective in Kamchatka which owns the trawler, said they were around 200 miles from the shore when they were found.

He said: ‘'The ship's crew saw on the open sea a half-sunk wooden boat with people.

''The crew on board the Peter Ilyich managed to raise three living sailors and one dead. According to preliminary data, they were citizens of the DPRK.''

This is the dramatic moment three NORTH KOREAN fisherman were rescued after spending two nights adrift in freezing waters that killed their captain.