동북아 해양환경보존을 위한 국제법적 연구

Abstract

The sea is an infinite treasure-house of the resources. Through all ages we have depended on the sea in order to obtain the resources to live. But the sea is experiencing heavy pollution due to industrial development.

Particularly, the Yellow and East sea of the Northeast Asia region (in Semi-enclosed sea), it is getting far worse.

The marine pollution is caused by land-based sources, the atmosphere, ships, dumping of wastes and other matter at sea, seabed activities, etc.

In the case of North-East Asia, the marine pollution is mainly caused by the wastewater from in-land and the oil pollution by marine accidents that frequently occur in the area.

There are two categories of international disputes concerned with environmental pollution

one among adjacent countries, and the other between developed and developing countries. Among the countries in the area, South Korea weighs more on the intergovernmental businesses, while Japan does it on the local businesses. Meanwhile, China and North Korea are not very active for such environmental issues.

The area needs the Northeast Asia region cooperation for handling the serious environmental problems it has such as the acid rain, the yellow sand, and marine and river pollution.

South Korea has a bilateral agreement with Japan, China, North Korea and Russia. There are several multilateral agreement in the area, they are NEACEC(Northeast Asian Conference on Environmental Cooperation), SOM(Meeting of Senior officer on Environment Cooperation in Northeast Asia), ECO-AISA(Environment Congress for Asia & the Pacific), NOWPAP(Northeast Pacific Action Plan), and TEMM(The Tripartite Environment Ministers Meeting between China, Japan, and Korea), etc.

Since 1994, NOWPAP presided over by UNEP has been doing an antipollution business to keep the Yellow Sea and the East Sea pollution free.

The TEMM has met regularly since 1999 to improve environmental businesses in the area. the Environment ministers from Korea, China and Japan had talks, during which reducing the long-ranged air pollution and environmental pollution in the Yellow and East sea and solving local environment related problems were discussed. They suggested some ways to cope with environmental pollution in North-East Asia in the 21st century.

The problems they have in the environmental cooperation of the North East Asia region are the lack of comprehensive system, the mutual understanding among the participating countries and the organized relationship between the bilateral and multilateral cooperations. It is intended for the countries in the area to acknowledge the same community spirit of environmental issue, establish an organization to preserve the marine environment, execute a joint research for marine environment and sign the agreement for intergovernmental cooperation.