This paper considers the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game in which there exists a dilemma that the best response is that both players are to confess, but doing not confess can give a higher gain to the both players in a social perspective. To resolve such a dilemma in the game, an incentive model to encourage to confess and a penalty model for being imposed when not confessing are introduced, respectively. Then, the conditions are characterized under which incentive or penalty involved in the game’s payoffs can make the game rational without a dilemma on both the personal and social perspectives, by taking the payoff values as variables with the incentive and penalty factors. Furthermore, it turns out that the resulting values of incentive and penalty are inversely proportional to each other, and thus, obtaining one of these amounts can provide the other. Simple examples are shown to interpret the theoretical verifications of our models, and randomly generated data based simulation results investigate the tendency of incentive and penalty and the resulting game values for a variety of instances. These results can provide a framework on resolving the dilemma by artificially putting incentive or penalty, although it is careful to apply more generalized real world games.

The main purpose of this study is to explain fishery relation in the seas surrounding Korea and how the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD), within game theory is applied to the region and suggest possible co-operative approaches in the region. The seas surrounding Korea are very productive fishing grounds with abundant fisheries resources because of the favourable marine environment, including its geographical features and physical oceanography. Nevertheless, Fishery relations among the coastal states in the region have been historically characterized by conflict rather than co-operation. Based on the PD game where there is always an incentive to do better by not co-operating, in order to ensure a share of the short-run benefits, fishing countries in the region have so far pursued the non-co-operative strategy of ‘don’t fish responsibly’ rather than the co-operative strategy of ‘fish responsibly’. Considering rapidly deteriorating situations in terms of fishery resources, regional co-operation among coastal states is urgently required to eliminate overfishing and increase fish stocks to sustainable levels. The West Sea/East China Sea and the East Sea, semi-enclosed seas, have unitary ecosystems, and many migratory fish species are shared between coastal states. Therefore, one countries’ efforts alone cannot effectively manage and conserve the fishery resources and close co-operation among coastal states is required. The 1982 UN Convention and other international instruments emphasize the role of RFOs in managing and conserving capture fisheries and encourage states to establish Regional Fishery organizations (RFOs) or strengthen existing RFOs to facilitate conservation and management for fish stocks. Therefore, an international regime is worthy of serious consideration in that it provides fundamental advantages for the conservation of fish stocks for the fishery characteristic of the region.