World Maritime Day in the DPRK

The World Maritime Day was first celebrated in 1978 on the occasion of the 20^th anniversary of the entry into force of the Convention on the International Maritime Organization. Later on, the Organization decided upon celebration of the World Maritime Day on any day of the last week of September. This year’s World Maritime theme chosen is “Seafarers: at the core of shipping’s future”.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea acceded to the International Maritime Organization in April 1986 and has, since then on, been taking appropriate administrative actions to implement newly adopted or amended instruments of the Organization.

The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on Seafarers was adopted in December 2009 and updated on several occasions to continuously improve the mechanism of implementation thereof. In the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea seafarers are provided with sufficient condition for rest and cultural life as well as with sound measures for occupational safety and protection.

The government ensures the well-knit system of education and training for seafarers and consistent betterment of the quality thereof. It also ensures the sound, accurate and objective system of seafarers registration and qualification. It ensures that seafarers play the key role in safe operation of ships with high sense of responsibility. Further it encourages cooperation with other countries and international organizations in training, registration and qualification of seafarers.

“STCW Convention is one of the most important instruments of the International Maritime Organization,” said Pak Yong Ho, Senior Official, Maritime Administration of the DPRK. “In order to comply with this Convention, we are taking appropriate actions to transpose the newly validated international model courses for seafarers into the curricula of the seafarers training centers throughout the country in close cooperation with the Education Commission, Ministry of Land and Maritime Transport and other agencies concerned. We also ensure that the existing simulators for seafarers are updated with several navigational environments added thereto with a view to improving qualification of seafarers. Further we ensure that mathematical modeling is carried out to predict indicators in a variety of navigational environments of a ship, focusing on the improvement of the performance of the navigational and engine simulators.”

“The competency of seafarers is required to correspond to the rapid development of shipping these days,” he added. “In this context, we will improve the assessment of competency of seafarers to contribute to the ever growing shipping.”