Preparation And Implementation Of The Ballast Water Management Convention In Korea: A Comparative Analysis

Development of shipping and trade has been one of reasons to introduce non-native species into new environment. Nowadays, ballast water is the primary cause ofmarine invasive species’ introduction. Even though most of these non-native speciescannot survive in ballast water tank and new environment, some non-native speciesout-compete indigenous species and disturb local biological diversity. IMOrecognized marine invasive species as the most threat to marine environment. Inaddition to damage to biology, marine invasive species harms economy and publichealth. Accordingly, the IMO member States adopted the ‘International Conventionfor the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments’ in2004toprevent marine invasive species’ introduction via ballast water. As a ContractingParties to the Convention, Korea has enacted the ‘Ballast Water Management Act’ in2007(the amendment has been approved in2014), and prepared legal mechanisms toimplement the Convention.On the other hand, it has been suggested that the Convention itself hascompliance difficulties because of complexity, uncertainty and difficulty predictingpotential consequence of marine invasive species. However, these compliancedifficulties can be complemented by making more stringent measures in domesticlegislation.Therefore, this paper assesses how amendment of2014has complemented the BWM Act to better reflect provisions of the Convention and whether it has more stringent measures to supplement the compliance difficulties of the Convention. As for Korean legal mechanisms, the paper accounts for current status and limitations and considers how to prepare the legal mechanisms to implement the Convention effectively by comparing with the U.S and Australia. Meanwhile, the objectives of the Convention can be further achieved when harmonized implementation is carried out through regiona l cooperation. Accordingly, the paper also looks over appropriate regional cooperation, way to strengthen the cooperation and contents for ballast water management in theEast Asia sea region after understanding regional cooperation in the Mediterranean sea region and the Baltic sea region.