Vice FM notes need to resume talks with Japan on sea boundaries under UN framework

Participants pose at the 10th International Conference on the Law of the Sea held in Seoul, Wednesday. Courtesy of Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Korea should resume the dialogue channel with Japan on the delimitation of sea boundaries under the relevant U.N. framework, a senior Seoul diplomat has said, as a bilateral agreement on continental shelf boundaries expired earlier this year.

Second Vice Foreign Minister Kim Jina made the remark at an international conference on Tuesday, saying that the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) serves as an essential framework governing Korea's maritime relations.

"There is a need to restore dialogue with Japan on maritime boundary issues within the UNCLOS framework," she said at the conference co-hosted by the foreign ministry and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

"In the waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula, where maritime entitlements overlap with neighboring countries, we require cooperation, mutual understanding and solutions based on international law," she said.

Kim's remarks appear to refer to the joint development zone (JDZ) agreement between Korea and Japan on determining the continental shelf boundaries in the East China Sea, which expired in June this year.

The JDZ agreement was signed in 1974 to pursue a joint exploitation of a continental shelf block believed to hold large deposits of oil and other natural resources.

But Japan became lukewarm about moving forward with the agreement after the UNCLOS, which came into force in 1994, adopted criteria that favored Japan in determining the continental shelf boundaries — by distance. That puts most of the JDZ area under Japan's exclusive economic zone.

Korea had held regular maritime talks with Japan until 2010, but the dialogue channel stalled amid a dispute over wartime history issues. Seoul maintains a similar dialogue platform with China.

Seoul and Tokyo had a working-level discussion specifically on the continental shelf in September last year, but the talks did not go beyond broad and general discussions.