AND A BOTTLE OF RUM

Company Claims to Find ‘Sunken Treasure Ship’ in South Korea

Could contain $130B of gold, but some are skeptical.

All that’s missing a ship full of ghosts—otherwise it’s the perfect plot for the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie. A South Korean company claims to have found a sunken Russian warship that sank 113 years ago that it believes could hold as much as $113 billion in gold bars and coins. The Seoul-based Shinil Group said its divers discovered a wreck it identified as the 6,200-ton Dmitrii Donskoi, which went down during the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War off an eastern Korean island. The company will attempt to raise it from the deep. “We believe there are gold boxes, and it’s historically proven,” said company spokesman Park Sung-jin. “The boxes were very tightly lashed, indicating there are really precious stuff inside.” It released images of the wreck, but some academics have urged people to be skeptical of claims of treasure within. Russian scholars have said Russia was unlikely to put so much gold on a single ship and it would have been much more sensible to move it by train.