항만국통제의 성과 및 한계성에 관한 연구

Abstract

As a general rule, the flag state has exclusive jurisdiction for a ship and all kinds of marine accidents such as ship's collusions, stranded vessels and marine pollution are considered only as a matter of flag state. However, the large accident that the ship named as Torry Canyon was stranded in 1967 caused changes of thinking about flag state. It means that the marine accidents were not only related to flag state but also coast country. So, IMO(International Marine Organization) started to enhance international safety standards of vessel, environmental safety, and qualification criteria for crew.

And then, several large accidents that happened again on the sea caused intervention of port state and since then, Port State Control(hereinafter refers to as "PSC") which is the inspection of foreign ships in national ports to verify that the condition of the ship and its equipment comply with the requirements of international regulations and that the ship is manned and operated in compliance with these rules appeared was to be an important part for safety of the sea.

In initial steps by individual countries, the effectiveness of PSC was very low which led to the cooperation among neighbor nations in European Region. At this point, local cooperation known as the Paris MOU(Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control) was adopted in January 1982 by fourteen European countries. It entered into operation on 1 July 1982 and was the first case to carry out PSC by local cooperation.

Meanwhile, IMO has encouraged the establishment of regional port state control organization and agreements on port state control called MOU. Now we are running nine MOUs all over the world and it covers all parts of the world's oceans.

As mentioned above, Paris MOU already took root in PSC and that is because the members of this MOU have lots of experience in PSC, moreover most of them are ranked high national level in the world.

In contrast to Paris MOU, other MOUs which belong to low regional level, a wide gap of economy and policy between countries within the same group, being established recently can't take efficiently and systematically the PSC yet. Therefore they are making an effort to develop their own organization.

As a matter of fact, the regional port state control regime contributes to prevention of marine accidents and pollution through elimination of the sub-standard ships by inspecting foreign ships in accordance with international conventions wherever they are. However, there are still remaining problems such as the legal limitation, the disparity of the system between regional cooperations, and the difference of application a way to the port state control.

This paper aims to analyze about achievements and limitations of Port State Control by nine MOUs from Paris MOU that was adopted the earliest thirty years ago to GCC MOU was established the latest just five years ago.