• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.534-540
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• 2020

Like most developed countries, South Korea is experiencing a severe lack of seafarers. Because young people's demands for a high quality of life has led them to seek shore-based careers. The wage difference between seafaring and shore-based careers has been decreasing gradually, however South Korea's unique Boarding Service Reserve System Policy has helped recruit and retain young sailors and, since 2017, the government has focused on creating new jobs and stabilizing the status of irregular workers in both private and public sectors. It specifically established the Economic, Social & Labor Council to carefully analyze seafarers' employment stability, which previously had been overlooked in the country. This research used the Binary Logit Model (BLM) to analyze the determinants of seafarers' employment stability in both permanent and non-permanent positions. We found that seafarers' employment stability correlated highly with their education level. This means that seafarers who graduated from the above mentioned two maritime universities would have more job stablity than those who graduated from maritime high schools or general universities. Other independent variables, such as the shipping company, vessel, hip management companies, work assignment, rank, and license had no significant impact on employment stability.