• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.149-163
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• 2016

Seafarers are an essential resource in maritime industries, which provide navigation skills, vessel maneuvering skills and fishing skills in the fishery industry. They also work as a driving force in pilotage, port operation, vessel traffic service, and marine safety. Other areas in maritime services, which rely on seafarer include safety management of ships, supervisory activities, and maritime accident assessment. In these ways, Korean seafarers have contributed to the growth of Korean economy. However, there have been issues of high separation rate, shortage of supply, multi-nationality, multiplicity of culture caused by employment of foreign seafarers, and aging. The present paper finds that maritime officers and fishery officers demonstrate differences in the statistics of on-board job taking and separation: the separation rate of fishery officers is higher than that of maritime officers. The existing data and statistics by the Korea Seafarer's Welfare & Employment Center could be improved by changing its structure from time series to panel data. The Korea Seafarer's Welfare & Employment Center is the ideal institution for collecting the panel data, as it has already accumulated and published relevant statistics regarding seafarer. The basic design method of the panel data is to adopt and improve it by including the information on ratings of maritime and fishery industries, ranks in a ship, personal information, family life, and career goal. Panel data are useful in short- and long-term forecasts of supply of Korean seafarers; demand evaluation of education, training, and reeducation of the seafarers; demographical dynamic analysis on Korean seafarers; inducement policy of long-term on board job taking in harmony with man-power demands in marine industries such as pilotage service; implementation of job attractiveness policy on Korean seafarers; and employment stabilization of Korean seafarers.