• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.834-846
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• 2017

An increase in the number of retiring experienced pilots as well as drastic graying of new pilots will raise the problems on deepening imbalance of supply and demand of pilots over the next 7 years, which could entail fatal problems for the safety of harbour pilotage. In this study, the improvement plan of legal system to ease imbalance between supply and demand of pilots and help secure more experienced pilots has been proposed. A current state survey and analysis, statistical analysis, questionnaire survey on foreign countries, in-depth consultation with experts, etc., were all carried out to support this research. The conclusions of this study are, firstly, to propose an amendment that the minimum requirement of 5 years of seagoing service as a master to sit for the pilot exam should be relaxed to 2 years(which must include at least 1 year of master's seagoing service within the most recent 5 years) but the minimum requirement of 1 year of pilotage service should be reinforced to 1 year and 6 months to obtain a higher class of pilot certificate. Secondly, it is proposed that an amendment offering an additional 1 point per year over the minimum period of 2 years of seagoing service as a master should be added, with a maximum of 10 points in order to rationalize the additional incentive point system. In order to secure experienced pilots and resolve the legal conflict between the certificate revalidation system and the retirement system, it is also proposed that an amendment be passed revoking the retirement system and limiting the validity of any new certificates only to 68 years of age when issuing or revalidating a certificate, if an applicant is over a certain age. Promotional work, such as collecting opinions from interested parties and generating positive public awareness, should be carried out in the future. It will also be necessary to conduct a study on the training pilot exam system.