South Korea Reviews 300 Safety Rules

By The Maritime Executive 02-07-2015 08:20:28

South Korea will review around 300 maritime rules this month to improve shipping safety after last year’s Sewol ferry sinking. The government has been criticized over its handling of the tragedy, which led to nearly 300 people, mostly school students, drowning. Nine people are still missing.

The policy review has been instigated by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries and follows the dismantling of the coast guard and the prosecution or resignation of many other people associated with the vessel’s management.

Sewol was overloaded at the time of its sinking in April 2014. Poor steering was also cited as one of the causes of the accident.

News agency Yonhap reports that the ministry will allocate 800 million won ($728,000) to conduct detailed evaluations of the main sea routes around South Korea, with another 4 billion won ($3.6 million) to be spent on introducing new safety guidelines for ships operating around the major ports of Ulsan, Gwangyang and Incheon.

In addition, the ministry will follow through on reforms announced in September last year that call for the government to directly regulate safety, to increase the amount of fines for rule violations from 30 million won ($27,000) to 1 billion won ($911,000), and to reduce the age of vessels that can be used as car ferries from 30 to 25 years, says Yonhap.

Further new rules being introduced include making it mandatory for all crew members to wear uniform. In order to ensure shipping companies are profitable and therefore able to maintain safety standards and train their crew, the government will allow them to apply fuel surcharges and charge higher fares for weekend operations.

The ministry is also tightening safety requirements for fishing vessels which made up around 75 percent of the nation’s maritime accidents during the past five years.