Fish tail sticking out from a refrigeration container, Noryangjin Fish Market in Seoul

Noryangjin Fish Market in Seoul (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images)

South Korea’s chance to reel in maritime influence

Seafood is no longer just a sustainability issue but a test of maritime governance, supply-chain integrity and geopolitical seriousness.

Schoni Song

13 May 20264 min read

The next contest over maritime order will not be decided only by warships, coast guards or diplomatic communiqués. It will also be decided by something quieter and, in its own way, more revealing: who is willing to clean up the rules of ocean commerce. That is where South Korea now has an opening.

When governments gather in Kenya for the 11th Our Ocean Conference from 16–18 June, Seoul will have a chance to do more than deliver another polished speech about sustainability. It can present itself as the Asian government most prepared to turn fisheries compliance into a test of global leadership. In a region where few countries are stepping forward decisively on this issue, that alone would make South Korea stand out.

The case for doing so is no longer confined to environmental policy. The real issue now is governance: whether states can defend lawful trade, credible traceability and basic standards of compliance in one of the world’s murkiest supply chains.

Seafood has become one of those sectors where legality, labour conditions, market access and geopolitical signalling converge. Illegal fishing, opaque transshipment, hidden sourcing and market distortion are no longer narrow conservation problems. They are part of a wider contest over maritime order and strategic influence.

Seoul is close enough to the system to matter, and visible enough to do something meaningful about it.

The Southeast Pacific squid trade shows this clearly. Recent findings tied Busan to a secondary transshipment route out of Zhoushan, showed that roughly 19% of tracked reefers continued to Busan after first stopping there, and found that China accounted for 52% of Korea’s total squid imports by value in 2024. South Korea was also a major destination for squid and cuttlefish exports from Peru and Chile.

That does not make South Korea the principal source of the problem. But it does mean Korea is close enough to the system to matter, and visible enough to do something meaningful about it. The challenge is bigger than squid. South Korea does not need to turn fisheries governance into an ideological crusade. In fact, it would be wiser not to. The smarter move for the Lee Jae-myung administration is to present stronger compliance not as a rebuke to any one country, but as a practical middle power contribution to cleaner markets and more credible rules at sea.

Seoul has already laid some of the groundwork for that claim. South Korea became the first country in East Asia to ratify the High Seas Treaty, formally the Agreement on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), in March 2025. Stronger leadership on fisheries governance would therefore not come out of nowhere. It would look like the natural next step of a position Seoul has already claimed: that South Korea is prepared to lead on the rules governing the global commons, not just benefit from them.

Fishing boats setting sail in Yangjiang, Guangdong Province, China after the end of an summer fishing ban in the South China Sea in 2023 (Chen Jimin/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)

This is where the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries becomes more than a bureaucratic backdrop. The ministry is now physically and politically positioned to be the face of this agenda. Its relocation to Busan has been framed as part of the Lee administration’s effort to build a “maritime capital region” by clustering maritime administration, industry, finance and related institutions in the southeast. Since the move, the ministry has also launched a high-level policy council for that strategy and added a Fishery Products Safety Policy Division at the start of 2026.

In other words, this is no longer just a change of address. The ministry now has both the symbolism and the institutional machinery to claim leadership on seafood governance, traceability and compliance.

And it would travel well in Washington. The point would not be for Seoul to mimic American rhetoric or appear to join a public pile-on. It would be to show the United States, including a Trump administration inclined to view trade, compliance and China-related supply chains through a strategic lens, that South Korea understands where the political weather is heading. A Korean pledge on fisheries traceability, transshipment scrutiny and import integrity would signal that Seoul is prepared to stand on the side of transparency, lawful commerce and enforceable standards. That is a strategic asset.

So what should South Korea bring to Kenya?

A compact but serious package would do the job. This would include tighter traceability requirements for high-risk seafood imports, stronger scrutiny of transshipment and relabeling routes, as well as a clear statement that fisheries compliance is part of maritime governance, not a side issue to it. None of this requires Seoul to grandstand. It simply requires the government, and especially the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, to behave like a serious maritime power with something to prove.

Handled correctly, such a pledge would let the Lee administration advance several messages at once. It would show that South Korea is ready to exercise leadership where the field is still relatively uncluttered. It would elevate the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries from relocated bureaucracy to strategic policy instrument. It would reinforce Busan’s claim to be a genuine maritime policy hub. And it would demonstrate to Washington that Seoul can stand for cleaner rules without turning every issue into a theatrical confrontation.

Last year, South Korea hosted the conference itself. This year, it has a chance to do something more consequential: show that middle-power leadership is not just about convening summits or reciting the language of rules-based order, but about taking responsibility for the messy, unglamorous work of making those rules real.

About the author

Schoni Song

Schoni Song is director and global business development lead at Macoll Consulting Group, Korea’s premier public and government affairs consultancy.

Topics

South Korea International law Diplomacy China Trade & investment