By Koh Choong-suk
The time has come for Korea and China to implement their maritime boundary delimitation agreement. Seoul and Beijing should commit themselves to protect fish and other sea resources. The agreement has become urgent following the killing of a South Korean coastguard by a Chinese fisherman last December.
The fishing agreement made it clear that the two nations should protect marine resources, but it has yet to go into effect.
Chinese fishermen have constantly invaded South Korean waters in their rampant illegal fishing. Their coastal seas are no longer a fishing ground for them, as overfishing practices there have made it a vast “desert.” They do not know about this “desertification,” because they have easy access to Korean coastal areas for still more abundant fishing. Fish will disappear from the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea if China does not care for the protection of the marine environment.
Some fish live in coastal areas, but some are migratory. Once one coast becomes barren, the other will too sooner or later.
Fishermen think God has offered them abundant fish in the vast oceans. They also think that they are entitled to catch the fish. Farmers seed in spring for a harvest in autumn. Fishermen do not know seeding in spring. They only know about harvesting from spring to summer, summer to fall, and fall to winter.
They do not know summer or winter vacations either; or that the sea is not offering unlimited resources for their fishing. This is what China should teach its fishermen. China and Korea agreed to regulate fishermen to protect the ocean environment and conserve nature in 2000, but nothing has been followed through on faithfully. This is a serious business for the two nations.
Ieodo is an isolated “island” inside the median line of the Korean sea, but it is ransacked by Chinese fishermen and their boats from January to December.
The waters around Ieodo are full of fish including croaker, herring, bass, mackerel, flounder, eel, cutlass fish, skate, butterfish, squid, anchovies and sharks.
There are no Korean fishermen or fishing boats threatened by violence from Chinese fishermen there these days. Do people know why? Korean fishermen cannot operate and even survive there in an atmosphere that Ieodo belongs to China.
All kinds of threatening acts against the Korean fisherman and their boats discouraged them from fishing around Ieodo. This is the reality of the situation that not many Korean people know about. Jeju fishermen know it however, but they have given up their fishing grounds there. Chinese fishermen think of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea as their own.
The Chinese people may think that the Korean territorial waters are limited to 12 nautical miles from the country’s coastline. Beijing has attempted to use the natural prolongation theory of the Chinese continent to the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982 opened a Pandora’s Box for all coastal nations to extend their continental shelf to 200 nautical miles and beyond.
All nations attempt to expand their sea territory. Exclusive Economic Zones are another fiasco to extend one coastal nation’s sea to 200 nautical miles. However, the baseline claimed by one nation is hardly acceptable to another. Many nations attempt to draw a straight line from an outermost island or rock to another to expand their sea territory.
Korea and China should take institutional steps to respect each other's sovereignty at sea.
China does not care about fairness and equity between and among the nations in its neighborhood. This is strange: It has been only caring for one starving nation under a three-generation dictatorial family. When North Korea attacked South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island, the Chinese government warned and instructed their fishermen not to fish near there. This is a pathetic story from a superpower nation.
China may enjoy its superpower status, but it may never get respect from neighboring nations, if it continues to behave as it has. I hope it will show the old Chinese civilization that invented fireworks for night festivals, not for killing in wars.
I hope it will show teachings of Confucius, Mencius and other wise men I know who came from China. The oldest human civilization China is proud of should be shown to its neighboring nations, not the power of arrogance, barbaric acts at sea and military weapons. Chinese fishermen should behave themselves in South Korean waters.
The Earth is the one and only living planet in the universe. What makes the Earth a living planet is its seas and oceans, which are common ground; and all nations should protect and conserve them. The superpowers should set an example in caring for the oceans and seas to all nations near and far. Elliott Norse, president of the Marine Conservation Institute, described the open ocean as “more akin to a watery desert.”
The world has turned to deep-sea fishing “out of desperation” without realizing fish stocks there take much longer to recover. Deep sea mining and fishing are depleting life there, leading scientists to call for an end to these practices.
China and Korea need to agree on drawing a median line in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea. They must carry out the ocean environment and marine-resources protection missions as stipulated in the 2000 fishery agreement. This will be a meaningful message from the tragic incident in the Yellow Sea last December. It will be the people's homage to the Korean Coast Guard member who was the victim of a barbaric act at sea.
The writer is the president of Society for Ieodo Research.