After the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA) came into effect, international cooperation through Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) was required, and each RFMO established and adopted the Conservation and Management Measure (CMM) for the regional Observer Programs to collect data on fishing activities and biological information and to monitor compliance with its CMMs. The observer coverage required by RFMO is set differently for each organization, ranging from 5% to 100%. In addition, tuna-RFMOs recommend increasing observer coverage in longline fisheries by at least 20% for reliable quantitative analysis of not only target species but also bycatch species and ecologically related species such as sharks, seabirds, sea turtles, and marine mammals. Therefore, in this study, we discussed ways to improve the national observer programs of Korean distant water fisheries that should be addressed in the future to respond to the RFMO trends.

The breakdown of the Korea-Japan fishing negotiations since 2016 has made it impossible for many domestic fishing vessels to operate in the Japanese EEZ water, and large purse seine fishing vessels are one of them. Mackerel is a highly migratory fish species, circulating in the East China Sea, South Sea, West Sea and East Coast throughout the year, and goes through a period of wintering, spawning, growth and feeding migration. In this study, in order to find out the dependence of large purse seine fishing vessels on mackerel fishing in the Japanese EEZ waters, we analyzed the characteristics of mackerel by large purse seine fisheries in the Japanese EEZ waters from 2010 to 2016. The catch and fishing details were investigated. The total catch of mackerel by large purse seine fishery, the average catch rate of mackerel in Japanese EEZ is 4 percent per year. The amount is estimated at 10.2 billion won per year. Although there was an effect, it was not judged to be a significant factor, and it was found that the amount of catch and fish price in the domestic waters had a greater influence on the total catch than the Japanese EEZ waters.

Changes in the fishing grounds for four drag-bagnet fisheries (large trawl, large pair trawl, large Danish seine and middle Danish seine) were investigated by year and sea-blocks in Korean waters. We used catch and effort data by sea-block (latitude × longitude: 30´ × 30´) of the National Institute of Fisheries Science (NIFS) and yearly fishing production statistics of the Korean statistic information service from 2008 to 2014. The main benthic habitat of fishing ground was sand and sandy mud material. The average swept areas for the four fisheries were 181.7 km2, 606.4 km2, 2,720.9 km2 and 252.8 km2, respectively. The main fishing ground was around Jeju Island and the eastern South Sea. The main fishing ground moved to the northern part of the South Sea during the study period due to a closure of fishing grounds and changes in the target species.

Tuna fisheries were applied to an integrated ecosystem-based fishery risk assessment method using indexes of target species status, inhabited species in a target ecosystem, habitat quality and socio-economic benefit of affected fisheries. This study suggested more effective and efficient management measures to break away from traditional management methods, such as limitation of catch and fishing effort. The results presented that the objective risk index (ORIS) on sustainability of bigeye and yellowfin tunas by purse seine fishery was estimated high due to the high catch ratio of small fishes. The ORIs of biodiversity (ORIB) and habitat quality (ORIH) of purse seine fishery were also estimated at a high level from using fish-aggregating devices (FAD). However, due to skipjack tuna’s high catches, the ORI of socio-economic benefit (ORIE) was estimated at a very low level. Due to the high bycatch rate, ORIB was high, and ORIS and ORIH were evaluated at a low level in longline fishery. Due to strengthern of fishing restrictions and increase of fishing costs, the ORIE was assessed to be very high. The ecosystem risk index (ERI) for two tuna fisheries was assessed low, but the overall FAD management by purse seine fishery is necessary at the ecosystem level.

This study is aimed at finding policy directions for Korean fisheries and fishing villages by using Delphi method for fisheries experts. Fisheries experts have highly evaluated the achievements of fostering aquaculture industry, seafood export support measures, and natural disasters relief and recovery arrangements among the policies promoted as so far. And it was recognized that policies such as fishery resources management, creation and recovery of fishery resources, improvement hygiene and seafood safety, and provision young fishermen with training and capacity building will be important. Future megatrends, for example changes in food consumption pattern, climate change, and demographic structure changes are expected to have a significant impact on fisheries and fishing villages. The Delphi survey indicates that the most important policy objective is to secure a stable fisheries production. In other words, fisheries policy in the future should be aimed at suppling sustainable seafood for popular consumption. Finding strategies and action plans that can achieve this goal will be an important policy issue. In conclusion, it is necessary that a number of fundamental researches carry out in Korea, which can lead to finding out a multifunctionality of fisheries and fishing village. In addition, it is important to expand the scope of fisheries policy, which can consider not only the fisheries producers but also seafood consumer’s and young fishermen perspectives. Furthermore, it recommends that fishery policy needs to include fishery related industry as well as application of 4th industrial revolution technology to fishery

The purpose of this study is to estimate potential yield (PY) for Korean west coast fisheries using the holistic production method (HPM). HPM involves the use of surplus production models to apply input data of catch and standardized fishing efforts. HPM compared the estimated parameters of the surplus production from four different models: the Fox model, CYP model, ASPIC model, and maximum entropy model. The PY estimates ranged from 174,232 metric tons (mt) using the CYP model to 238,088 mt using the maximum entropy model. The highest coefficient of determination (R2), the lowest root mean square error (RMSE), and the lowest Theil’s U statistic (U) for Korean west coast fisheries were obtained from the maximum entropy model. The maximum entropy model showed relatively better fits of data, indicating that the maximum entropy model is statistically more stable and accurate than other models. The estimate from the maximum entropy model is regarded as a more reasonable estimate of PY. The quality of input data should be improved for the future study of PY to obtain more reliable estimates.

The purpose of the study is to analyze the status and trend of less favored condition of fishing village in Korean island regions using the census of agriculture, forestry and fisheries. The less favored condition was measured as the difference in accessibility to major services and in fishery sales and resident infrastructure, applying the difference-in-difference method and propensity score matching method respectively. The result shows that access to major services has improved in island area between 2010 and 2015, implying that related policies such as the island comprehensive development project have been successful to some extent. However, some educational facilities, cultural facilities, and health facilities still have low inaccessibility and fishery sales are also significantly lower than in general area. This suggests that it is necessary to maintain related policies like the direct payment of fisheries.

Most of the changes that make paradigm shift have been involved international level problems related to environment, resource and structure problems in these days. Resolving those common issues the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization(UN FAO) has played most important role in fisheries with publishing the series of the technical guidelines for responsible fisheries papers. The guidelines for responsible fisheries have introduced for applying the concept of sustainable development with considering overall changes in fisheries domains. And also have objectives that establishing the discipline of fisheries worlds. Although these papers are remarkable, there is still few research or education contents of them in Korea. Fisheries business administration is a kind of social science that influenced by environmental, social changes so called paradigm shift. So one of the most important thing that has the education of sustainable development is accommodation or adaptation of them with grasping the phenomenon continuously. The aims of this study are exploring the FAO’s the technical guidelines for responsible fisheries documents and contents of college’s fisheries business administration and finding out the overall systematic topics and themes of fisheries business administration education. The result of this study shows that the contents of fisheries business administration did not including the concept of responsible fisheries even were out of date in using statistical data. And there is some missing issues that including fisheries policy, resource management, and related law should be enhanced. This study suggests the framework of fisheries business administration with comparing analysis on FAO’s document and college’s course of study in Korea. The proposed framework of major topics of fisheries business administration that still needed to be improved should be a milestone of understanding and debating the core factors of fisheries business administration education and research.

The WCPFC CMMs related to tropical tunas have been strongly restricting fishing capacity and operating activities of main fisheries, especially purse seine fishery. In terms of changes in fishing trend by implementing relevant measures of FAD set, the number of FAD set by Korean purse seine fleet showed a decreasing pattern with the lowest level of FAD set proportion among major distant water fishing nations. With regards to the FAD closure, there was no significant change in fishing effort but a drop in catch, especially bigeye tuna during the period of FAD closure. Moreover, it showed closely similar trends between the number of FAD set and bigeye tuna catch. In terms of measures related to the high sea area including a ban on fishing on the HSP and limitation of fishing days on the high sea by flag state, proportions of catch and effort on the high sea had sharply declined after implementing those measures. As relevant measures are expected to be strengthened, it should pay attention to change of coastal nations policies and focus on improving fishing efficiency of unassociated school set with multi-pronged efforts.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN) has been the most essential organization in Asia. In spite of the world economic crisis, Southeast Asian countries have shown fast economic growth since 2000, and they have been actively expanding investments and trades especially with major countries. Research on competitiveness in ASEAN market has spawned an increasingly large literature, but empirical research on the determinants of Korea’s export to ASEAN is limited. The purpose of this study is to draw out the determinant of Korean fisheries export to ASEAN by carrying out a panel analysis. For achieving such a purpose, pooled OLS, Hausman Test, Fixed Effect, Random Effect are performed. The last 20 years’data over the period of 1995 to 2014 concentrated on the ASEAN 6 countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippine, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam is used in this study. Amount of aquatic products export to ASEAN is used as the dependent variable; real exchange rate, real GDP, relative price level and GDP per capita are used as the explanatory variables and FTA as dummy variable. Empirical results show that fixed-effect analysis is the best model among all the models. As the fixed effect model shows, real exchange rate, real GDP, GDP per capita and dummy variable(FTA) play positive and statistically significant roles in fisheries export to ASEAN, while price variable plays a negative and statistically significant role to the dependent variable.

This study aims to evaluate the status of implementation of bilateral-fishery order since the Korea-Japan Fisheries Agreement came into effect in 1999 in order to improve fisheries relationships between two countries. The agreement regulates bilateral-fishery order by the principle of the EEZ regime and mutual benefits among countries. (e.g. the mutual agreed fishing in EEZ and cooperation for resource management). However, the Korea-Japan Fisheries Agreement has some limitations such as reducing quotas of the mutual agreed fishing in EEZ, strengthening Japanese fisheries regulation, insufficient cooperation for fisheries management and joint countermeasures. In order to improve fisheries relationships between the two countries, it is imperative to rebalance quotas for the mutual agreed fishing in EEZ, to establish effective resource management systems in the Intermediate zone, to invigorate fisheries cooperation in the private sector, and to introduce new management systems by species over the all waters around East Asia. To accomplish such measures, it is necessary for Korean and Japanese governments to improve fisheries relationships based on trust and cooperation, achieving a win-win situation. Additionally, it is required to incorporate fisheries management among Korea, China, and Japan.

The main purpose of this study is to explore a way of South-North Korea fisheries cooperation through international organizations under the principles of the Korean peninsula trust process. Considering the government policy toward the North, although some humanitarian aids or cooperations may be plausible with permission of the Ministry of Reunification. direct cooperations between the South and the North Korea must be much limited at leat under the present government. The 5.24 measures taken in 2010 banned in fact all economic/humanitarian cooperations by private sectors and government. Noting the present and the visible future, an important question is whether the North accepts all cooperations including fisheries, bartering giving up nuclear weapon development for the 5.24 measures. It would be a difficult question to be answered, because win-set to both parties is too narrow, so far as there is no change in the South-North conflicting priority policies. If so, one way of implementing South-North fisheries cooperations is to drive forward cooperative programs through UN organizations. Since for instance FAO and WFP secure justification and roles and has a global network, they have sufficient capacity of being abe to organize fisheries experts. If the South can finance the budget necessary for the programs, FAO or WFP would lead the programs through a negotiation with the North. In other words, it is a type of cooperative model that FAO or WFP leads the programs and the South finances. In addition, if World Fisheries University(WFU) is invited to the Republic of Korea, it might make a great contribution to expert exchange of the North.

This study is to focus on the status of implementation of bilateral-fishery order based on the Korea-China fisheries agreement and aims to improve fisheries relationship between two countries. Korea-China Fisheries Agreement entered into force in 2001, and serves as a basic framework of the bilateral fisheries order. However, the fishing order between Korea and China has the following limitations. First, it is standstill of joint response for a practical resource management. Second, there are still gaps between the quotas of mutual accord fishing and fishing operation work performance. Third, China’s illegal fishing is taking place consistently. Fourth, the effective cooperation between two countries in fisheries is not carried out. Finally, the Korea has faced difficult situations to adhere to a balanced position in the fishery negotiations due to conflicting positions on China and Japan. In order to solve these problems, the fishing order between Korea and China will be able to maintain the competitiveness of Korean fishery sector by reinforcing Korea’s fishing sovereignty, Korea and China, based on trust and cooperation, will make efforts to improve bilateral fisheries relations to maximize mutual benefit in fishery sector. Specifically, first, the two countries should strengthen the resources management based on the scientific research and the improvement of imbalance of the mutual agreed fishing in EEZ. Second, Korea has to achieve our targeted performance of fishing operation and establish a joint resources management system between two countries in the provisional measure zone. Third, Korea should implement to collect fisheries information about China fishing vessels which are operating in the EEZ of Korea. Finally, Korea and China should be building up effective governance framework for the establishment of fishing order.