The video images are ghostly and blurred, but they are part of an intriguing treasure hunt. The grainy footage - no more than a few minutes long - shows the eerie silhouette of a crumbling ship. This wreck could be the Dmitry Donskoy, an armoured cruiser that sank in the Sea of Japan in 1905, during the biggest naval battle of the Russian-Japanese war.
The 5,800-tonne ironclad vessel sailed from Europe as part of the tsarist Russia Baltic fleet. Its orders were to cut the supply lines of the Japanese army, which was attacking Port Arthur, now the Chinese city of Dalian. But the port fell and the fleet was redirected to Russia's Pacific fortress at Vladivodstok. They never made it. The Japanese destroyed the entire convoy during the Battle of Tsushima.
The Donskoy was engaged several times by the enemy. However, she managed to rescue hundreds of seamen from crippled Russian destroyers.
Having survived the initial engagement at the Battle of Tsushima, the Donskoy tried to escape into the Sea of Japan in the hope of reaching Vladivodstok. But her pursuers spotted her smoke near Ulleung Island. Cornered beneath the cliffs of a small archipelago, and unable to manoeuvre because its decks and cabins were full of wounded and survivors of other ships, the captain of the Donskoy opted to deny the Japanese the satisfaction of seizing their prey. Under cover of darkness he sent most of the crew ashore. Then, with a small party, he scuttled the Donskoy off the coast of Ulleung Island.
Since then, a legend has haunted the area: that a fabulous treasure lies inside the holds of this ill-fated ship. This myth was sparked off when the locals on Ulleung Island saw the Russian crew disembarking. They carried a safe containing gold coins and jars. This was probably the ship's cash box that the captain kept on board to buy food and coal during the Donskoy's port calls.
Unfounded rumours spread down the years. To some, the Donskoy carried all the tsar's gold ingots for financing the war. With time, the wealth supposedly submerged with the Donskoy became inflated to a staggering US$124 billion. None of the myth-believers took the time to consider that such an amount was equivalent to a weight of 14,000 metric tonnes - more than a 10th of the weight of all the gold ever mined in the world.