Dear MEL Topic Readers,
South Korea's fishermen keep dying. Is climate change to blame?
The fishing industry was once a significant part of South Korea’s economy,
but it has been declining in recent years. The number of people employed in the
industry declined to 114,000 in 2020 from 144,000 in 2015, and almost half of
the workforce is now over 65 years old. The industry is then employing inexpensive
migrant workers who are willing to work under harsh work conditions. However,
they aren’t always given sufficient safety training, and their language
barriers with other South Korean crew members could pose dangers when things go
wrong at sea. In fact, as sea temperatures around the peninsula are increasing more
rapidly than the global average, total fish catches in South Korea have been
declining, forcing South Korean fishermen to sail farther out to search for fish.
However, South Korean fishermen are facing strong and sudden wind gusts more
often at sea, most likely caused by the rising sea temperatures. They are making
longer travel and incurring higher fuel costs at rougher seas to catch a little
more fish with untrained foreign labor. The prospect for South Korea’s fishermen
seems quite gloomy.
Read the article and learn about the challenges South Korea’s fishermen
are facing.
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