| ISANA
Jul. 2003 No.27 |
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Whaling in Korea and issues after the moratorium
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Chang-Myeng Byen
Chairman
Korea Re-whaling Promotion Forum
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1. Whaling
culture in Korea
Regarding whaling along the
coast of the Korean peninsula, whale bones have been excavated from the shell
heap of Dongsam village in Busan in the New Stone Age. Further, since part of
whale bones excavated from the shell heap of Suga village, Kimhae in Kyeong-nam
Province, were observed to have been burned, it is conjectured that whale meat
used to be eaten in those periods. In the rock engravings of Bankudae of Ulsan
(National Treasure No. 285) that date back about 3000, there were drawings of
marine mammals together with those of terrestrial animals such as tiger, wild
boar, deer, dogs and sheep. Of the marine mammals, whales were found in the largest
number. According to the research results later reproduced with computer graphics,
it was found that, out of about 220 rock engravings discovered, 66 were those
of marine mammals and 42 were those of whales. This shows that whales had been
closely related to men at that time.
Now Ulsan has developed into
a huge industrial complex, with no trace of ancient times. Originally, the Bay
of Ulsan, located on the eastern coast of Korea, is a narrow and long bay with
a deep recess. Its interior part had been known as a migratory route of whales
from olden times, linked with the Taehwa River and the towhead of the estuary.
Before the commercial whaling moratorium was enforced, whaling bases existed in
Bang-ojin fishing port at the mouth of the Bay and Jang-seng-po fishing port inside
the bay. Thus the relations of the area with whales have been very close. Bankudae
is located a little over 10 kilometers from the mouth of Taehwa River, and it
is considered that the sea had extended to that point in the olden times. As many
as 42 rock drawings of fin whales, gray whales, sperm whales and killer whales
have been found. Some of the gray whales were pregnant with calves. There are
also valuable drawings in which people on board of the whaling boats were harvesting
whales with harpoons and nets. These are valuable cultural heritage notable not
only for the Korean history but also the world whaling history as a whole.
Subsequent introduction and
the rise of Buddhism in Korea prevented the development of fisheries. Historical
documents show that king's decrees were issued to prohibit killing of living things
in Silla Kingdom in the year 15 under King Beob-heong (528) and Baekjea Kingdom
in the first year under King Beob (599). Those decrees were applied not only to
terrestrial animals but also aquatic animals, like whales, sea lions and fur seals.
Fishing implements were destroyed by burning and fishing activities were banned.
Such decrees first took a deep root in the mind of aristocrats, and practice of
trading and eating those animals went out of existence. Fishermen found no motive
for fishing and the Buddhist faith was gradually accepted in their lives. By the
time ordinary people's religious life was dominated by the Buddhist thought, killing
of animals came to be regarded as a sinful act and fishing activities as such
were abandoned. As a result whaling in Korea also declined. But there remain historical
records that show that even in those periods, stranded or drifted whales were
of value as food for ordinary people and their oil as lamp oil for privileged
aristocrats.
Buddhism flourished in Korea until the time the Koryo dynasty ended. The Korea
succeeded by Choseon dynasty (1392) embraced Confucianism. Their policy to belittle
fishermen because of extreme ideology of nobility and humble caused fisheries
and whaling in Korea to survive only as negative and subsidiary means of subsistence.
Because of this policy to give a very low esteem to fishermen, no reports of whale
strandings were made to the government as all the profit was monopolized by the
government officials. There are records that drifted whales were pushed back to
the sea as unwanted guests. |
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2. Advance
of whaling by Big Powers to the Korean Peninsula
As the prohibition of killing
animals by the Buddhist teaching and the thought to give low regards to fishermen
under the Confucianism lasted more than 10 centuries, the whale stocks around
the Korean Peninsula were kept in its unexploited state, but they were made target
of whaling by the Big Powers of the world since around mid-18th century. The first
whaling ships that appeared in the sea surrounding the Korean Peninsula were American
whaling fleets harvesting fin and sperm whales from around 1848. Historical records
show that the crew of American whaling ships sometimes landed on the Korean Peninsula
without permission for procurement of food, water and charcoal, causing problems
with the local residents. Subsequently, as the presence of abundance of whale
stocks in the eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula was known, whaling ships came
to the area, one after another, from Germany, France, Britain and Russia, making
the Korean waters a competing ground among the Big Powers.
The Choseon dynasty then
had been taking a policy to close itself to the outside world. These big powers
shook the Korean government and the people at the end of this dynasty, with diplomatic
pressures on the pretext of making lease negotiations to secure whaling bases
of their own. The first lease treaty was concluded under quasi-compulsive pressures
from Russia in March 1893, as a result of which it was decided that Russia would
use, as its bases, Ulsan in Kyong-nam Province, Jan-Jeon in Kangwan Province and
Mayang Island in Hamkyeng Province for 20 years. This gave a motive to British-Russian
Whaling Union jointly established by the British and the Russians to launch whaling
using part of Busan and Wonsan as their bases in December 1899, and to Japan to
acquire whaling right within the territorial waters of Korea by obtaining whaling
permit in February 1900. The "war" for whales between Japan and Russia
was ended in Japan's favor as a result of Japan's victory in the Russo-Japan War
started in 1904, and the whale resources along the Korean Peninsula came under
Japan's monopoly. |
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3. Whaling
under Japan's occupation
During the Japanese Occupation
period which lasted 35 years from 1910 to the end of the World War II in 1945,
Japan's fisheries capital made competitive advance to Korea and spread modern
large-scale fisheries. Most of the fisheries with high profit and requiring large
capital, such as engine-powered trawling, engine-powered purse-seine and large-type
fixed net fisheries, and whaling, were managed by the Japanese. Statistics on
whaling at the end of 1942 show that there were 17 whaling vessels with 242 workforce
and harvest value of \1,661,892. Most of the whale meat was shipped to Japan.
About 80% of all the catches were processed at the whaling bases of Jang-seng-po
and Bang-ojin fishing ports in Ulsan on the eastern coast and the remaining 20%
were processed at Hoksan Island in Jeon-nam Province and Oechong Island in Chang-nam
Province on the western coast.
Regarding the Japanese whaling
vessels which had operated to the end of the war, the U.S. military authorities
declared that all the fishing rights before August 9, 1945, should be made invalid,
and all the vessels and equipment related to such activities should be confiscated.
Nevertheless, the Japanese shipowners returned all the vessels to Japan with their
families, furniture and other properties amid the postwar confusion.
4. Korean War and restoration of whaling
As stated earlier, all the
whaling vessels, managed by the Japanese, had been withdrawn to Japan, and no
whaling vessel was left in Korea after liberation. Only whaling bases and experienced
whaling ship crew and flensers were left out. Those people having whaling skills
were willing to resume whaling based on whaling technique they had learned from
the Japanese. As a result, they established "Choseon Whaling Co." in
Busan and Ulsan in September 1946, purchased two small restructured whaling boats
from Japan, and started operation. The catch in the first whaling season was favorable
with 65 fin whales, enabling them to establish their initial business base. Subsequently,
the number of whaling vessels, including small boats, increased to 18 after the
establishment of such companies as Daedong Whaling Co. and Tong-yang Whaling Co.
However, after the liberation, they were unable to export whale meat to Japan,
and due to long religious habit of not eating whale meat in Korea, the prices
of whale meat remained low, causing difficulty in maintain the enterprise. The
6.25 Korean War, which erupted on June 25, 1950 by North Korea, was a tragic war
for the Korean people. But, fortunately to the whaling industry, consumption of
low-priced and readily available whale meat increased to solve the issue of protein
supply especially to counter the food shortage in the wake of the inflow of over
3 million refugees southward to small tract of areas in the east side of Nactong
river such as Taegu and Busan. The increase in demand pushed up the price of whale
meat, helping the Korean whaling industry to thrive anew. The normalization of
relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea in 1966 enabled resumption of
whale meat exports to Japan, causing whaling to become a thriving industry. Before
the IWC's commercial whaling moratorium came into force in 1985, a total of 21
whaling vessels (total permitted tonnage: 1,389 tons) caught an average of 625
whales equivalent to 1,774 tons a year in 1980-1984. The industry earned $3.54
million dollars of foreign exchange by exporting an annual average of 846 tons
of whale meat to Japan during the period. |
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5. Moratorium
and the end to whaling
When, at the 34th annual
meeting in 1982, the IWC resolved to prohibit commercial whaling, the Korea, together
with Japan, protested to the IWC's decision but was forced to abandon whaling
under pressures from the United States that "it would reduce to zero the
allocation of pollock in the U.S. waters to any country diminishing the effectiveness
of the IWC's regulations." The amount of pollock the Korean North Pacific
trawling vessels had been catching in the Bering Sea for 1981-1985 totaled 296,000
tons on the yearly average, while the catch of whales was 1,774 tons. In a bid
to secure overall fisheries profit, Korea abandoned whaling. Japan lodged a formal
objection to the IWC's decision, paving way for future research whaling and small-type
whaling. On the other hand, the Korean government did not file an objection. Whalers
also abandoned their whaling permit, allured by the compensation for whaling rights
and the fund to transfer to other types of fisheries, as proposed by the government.
Later, the government took further unwise measures to delete clauses related to
whaling in the revised Fisheries Law.
6. Efforts to resume whaling and issues surrounding it
Overall prohibition of whaling
remains in force for 17 years after the commercial whaling moratorium was enforced.
In the meantime, whale resources along the coast of Korea have increased dramatically.
According to the surveys by the National Fisheries Research & Development
Institute, it is estimated that more than 110,000 heads of 35 species of cetaceans
are found migrating in the area. Those increased cetaceans prey on important fish
species harvested by fisheries, such as squid, saury, mackerel, sardine and pollock.
Fishermen are now protesting because their catch is decreasing because of predation
by cetaceans. As evidence of increase of whale population, there are an increasing
number of incidental catches of whales in fishing nets year by year. Within the
marine police district of Pohang on the eastern coast only, the whale incidental
catches have been increasing annually from 45 whales in 1999 to 95 in 2000, 143
in 2001 and 65 as of the end of July 2002. Given the fact that most of the whales
caught incidentally were minke whales, fishermen are demanding for appropriate
culling of whales because of abnormal increase of whale resources affect the fishery
resources and the livelihood of fishermen. They also call for sustainable use
of whale resources. However, the problem here is that, 18 years after the termination
of whaling, there remains no single whaling vessel, and whaling gunners are all
in their seventies and no landing stations are left. Further, there has been no
adequate research on whales because of an insufficient number of whale researchers.
In closing, I wish to express my expectation for cooperation from the Japanese
people for the solution of these issues. |
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| Performance at the Ulsan Whale Festival,reproducing ancient whaling in Korea. |
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| Children
of Arikawa-cho,Nagasaki Prefecture,making presentation of "Hazashi Daiko" (Hazashi
Drum Performance), a
traditional whale-related performing art in japan,at the Ulsan Whale Festival(May
30,2003) |
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| Japanese community participated in the festival from last year. Test eating of whale dishes cooked on the spot,using
whales caught incidentally locally,was popular among visitors. |
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