Tokyo: Japanese authorities said they rescued all of about 60 North Korean fishermen whose boat collided with a Japanese patrol vessel and sank in an area crowded with poachers.

Coast guard officials earlier said that only about 20 North Korean crew members were thrown into the sea on Monday, local time, after their steel boat collided with a Japanese Fisheries Agency inspection boat in Japan's exclusive economic zone off the country's northern coast.

A Japanese Fisheries Agency patrol vessel at the site of its collision with a North Korean fishing boat. Credit:AP

Officials later said they rescued far more than first thought. No one was missing.

The North Korean boat sank about 30 minutes after the collision in the Yamatotai area, known as rich grounds for squid fishing north-west of the Noto Peninsula.