The Japanese coast guard was alarmed early Tuesday after a small and foreign-looking boat was seen cruising off the Noto Peninsula, Ishikawa Prefecture in central Japan, Japan Times reported.

A coast guard official told media their office was alerted at 7:30 in the morning by local fishermen after spotting the ragged wooden boat with none people aboard near Nanatsujjima, an island near Wajima city.

Upon investigation, a man on the boat stood up and told the coast guard officers they were North Koreans.

"The nine people are family and relatives. I belong to the North Korean military," the man was quoted on Japan Times.

The coast guard is towing the boat and assured the public it will conduct a thorough investigation as soon as it reaches the port in Kanazawa.

Defectors from the Communist state normally escape to diplomatic and consular offices in China. It is unusual for them to flee to Japan by boat. The last time Japan encountered defectors from North Korea was in June 2, 2007, when four passengers boarded a small boat and drifted in the Sea of Japan toward Aormori Prefecture.

An expert from North Korean affairs said the passengers may have fled their country due to severe hunger.

North Korean has suffered from recurrent famine since the early 1990s, when an estimated 1 million people died. The country depends on international assistance to feed its citizens.

The World Food Programme, North Korea's main distributor of multilateral food assistance, reported that as of March 2011, at least 6 million people have too little to eat, and a third of children have chronic malnourishment.

Food shortages coupled with human rights abuses forced hundreds of thousands of North Koreans to stake their lives in attempting to flee to China.