BUSAN -- Four stowaways were arrested in South Korea and Japan on suspicion of smuggling themselves into Japan in 2016 and committing theft there, police said Tuesday.
The international crime investigation team at the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency also charged 17 others without detention over the alleged smuggling case.
According to the team, the four, including a 59-year-old woman, illegally entered a port in Shimonoseki, Japan's Yamaguchi Prefecture, after boarding a tug boat at a port in the southeastern coastal city of Busan on Dec. 28, 2016, and hiding themselves on the boat's warehouse for 10 hours.
After months of thefts in Japan, the four were arrested by Japanese police last year. Three of the four were imprisoned in Japan, while South Korean police took into custody the other, who turned himself into local police when he was deported to South Korea.