Commentary
The oceans are often likened to Earth’s lungs. In practice, they function more like a global circulatory system. What moves through them—fish, nutrients, pollutants, vessels, people, and even data—flows through a single, connected network that none of us owns and all of us rely on.
When that system is healthy and robust, food security strengthens, and economies stay resilient. When it is compromised, the damage spreads quietly but relentlessly across borders and generations.
For too long, global fisheries policy has been shaped by the mentality of “just one more season”—one more catch, one more year of postponing structural decisions. This mindset has persistently hindered the reforms essential for securing long-term ecological and economic sustainability. As today’s fisheries sector is changing faster than ever, the global community can no longer afford this short-horizon habit.
The challenges emerging at sea are increasingly interwoven. A modern fishing vessel is at once a workplace, a mobile asset in a complex supply chain, and a node in a global surveillance and data system. In this context, issues once handled separately—illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, crew labor abuses, and marine environmental concerns—are clearly connected and even poses security threats: vessels that cut corners on catch reporting may also cut corners on crew safety, wages, and working conditions, and are less likely to consider impacts on seabirds, sharks, whales, and other ecosystems.
If we picture the global fishing fleet as factories at sea, then IUU operators are the ones disabling the alarms, cooking the books, and dumping waste out the back door when nobody is watching.
Climate change adds urgency and complexity. As ocean temperatures rise, species shift their distribution horizontally across basins and vertically in the water column. If allocation and management systems remain static while ecosystems move, tensions will increase, and compliance will erode. This requires improved scientific research on climate impacts, promoting data sharing, and advocating for management approaches that can adjust to changing conditions without turning every revision into a political crisis.
Against this backdrop, fisheries management is no longer a narrow exercise in tallying catch and allocating quotas. Decisions about fisheries now sit at the intersection of biology, ecology, trade, security, labor, and technology.
Few countries would grasp this as acutely as the Republic of Korea. Within a single lifetime, Korea has moved from hunger to abundance, from a war-torn coastline to a nation whose ships are present on distant horizons. As Korea underwent this transformation, it faced its share of challenges as one of the world’s largest consumers and harvesters of seafood. In response, we have implemented a series of policies aimed at recalibrating our fisheries management framework.
That journey has taught us a simple truth: sustainable fisheries are not a “nice to have”; they are a non-negotiable condition for long-term global security, social cohesion, economic stability, and ecological integrity.
Korea is acting along three main tracks. First, we are strengthening our domestic framework. We have aligned our laws with international instruments, increased sanctions for violations, and enhanced monitoring, control, and surveillance of Korean-flagged vessels through the Distant Water Fisheries Development Act.
We are also tightening standards for onboard working and living conditions. Transparency for catch must extend to the treatment of people at sea, including verifiable crew documentation and onboard conditions. Legality and basic decency are inseparable.
Second, we are investing in technology. Satellite-based vessel monitoring and electronic logbooks on all Korean-flagged distant water fishing vessels are closely monitored 24/7 by the Fisheries Monitoring Center of Korea. We are also implementing electronic monitoring on a trial basis, with cameras, which now makes it possible to build a near-real-time picture of fishing activity. When every ton of catch is recorded and verifiable, markets can distinguish between products that respect the rules and those that do not. Data integrated into credible systems turns “sustainable” from a label into a verifiable claim.
Third, we are committed to strengthening international fisheries governance. Korea actively participates in regional fisheries management organizations, supporting science-based catch limits, compliance reviews, and measures such as port-state inspections to close off markets to IUU products. We work with partners to ensure that coastal and small island developing states—for whom fisheries are central to food security and identity—are not left behind as global standards tighten.
Our objective is to reinforce a rules-based framework in which incentives are aligned with long-term sustainability and basic standards of conduct. That means more consistent implementation of global agreements, more effective information-sharing between flag, coastal, and port states, and closer coordination among the fisheries, maritime, and labor communities so that operators cannot jurisdiction shop their way around core obligations.
No country can take on this task alone. Korea intends to remain firmly on the side of those who choose the more demanding, but more durable, path: building and upholding a robust order for global fisheries. Thinking beyond the next season is no longer a matter of ambition; it is the minimum required to ensure that the ocean remains a stabilizing force rather than a source of escalating risk for posterity.
Thinking beyond the next season also means building the institutions and coalitions that can sustain this effort over time. While our shared commitments are reflected in SDG 14, this moment demands renewed participation to deliver on them. Since 2017, the U.N. Ocean Conference has convened every four years to accelerate progress on SDG 14. Building on that, Korea has offered to co-host the Fourth United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC4) with Chile in 2028.
UNOC4 must not be just a box-ticking exercise among the global diplomatic community; it should be the moment when the international community forges a coherent response to the threats of illegal fishing, labor abuses, climate change, marine pollution, and the widening digital divide. Korea is prepared to lead this effort, drawing on its experience, technological capabilities, and commitment to a rules-based order. If we succeed, UNOC4 will mark the moment the world treated ocean health as a core condition for collective security, resilience, and prosperity.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
