South Korea and China are allotted identical catch limits in each other's exclusive economic zones under their bilateral fisheries agreement, but Chinese vessels are landing more than 16 times as much fish as Korean boats. Korean vessels have used barely 1% of their allotment, while Chinese boats fish relatively actively in Korean waters, prompting calls to recalibrate the scale of mutual access.
Data submitted by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries to the office of Rep. Kim Sun-kyo of the People Power Party, a member of the National Assembly's Agriculture, Food, Rural Affairs, Oceans and Fisheries Committee, showed on the 12th that the two countries agreed to allot each side 1,150 vessels and 55,750 tons of catch in the other's EEZ as of the end of August this year. Korean vessels landed 782 tons in China's EEZ, or 1.4% of the quota.
Chinese vessels, by contrast, landed 12,758 tons in Korea's EEZ over the same period, or 22.9% of their quota. That is 16.3 times the Korean figure.
The number of vessels actually fishing also diverged sharply. Of the 1,150 Korean boats authorized, only 115 entered China's EEZ, a utilization rate of 10.0%. On the Chinese side, 824 vessels entered Korean waters, a rate of 71.7%.
The imbalance is not confined to this year. Last year, out of the same 55,750-ton quota granted to each side, Korean vessels landed 2,831 tons, or 5.1%, while Chinese vessels landed 37,500 tons, or 67.2% — about 13.2 times the Korean catch.
The gap is also clear in cumulative figures since the fisheries agreement took effect in June 2001. Through August this year, Korean vessels had landed a cumulative 74,543 tons in China's EEZ, while Chinese vessels had taken 981,318 tons from Korean waters. Over roughly 25 years, Chinese boats caught about 13.2 times as much seafood as their Korean counterparts.
The ministry attributes the gap in fishing activity to poor returns for Korean vessels. Sailing the long distance to China's EEZ yields returns that do not justify costs such as fuel, leaving little demand among Korean fishers to use the access.
"Even though the two countries have the same quota, our vessels' catch rate stood at only 1.4% as of August this year," Kim said. "To protect resources in our EEZ and ensure substantive fairness, measures such as reducing the scale of Chinese vessel access to reflect actual fishing performance must be prepared."
The ministry said it plans to continue reducing the number of licensed Chinese vessels and their catch quotas in Korea's EEZ when negotiating the scale of mutual access through the Korea-China Joint Fisheries Committee, in an effort to resolve the imbalance.