South Korea: Global bluefin tuna farming and our reality

Tuna (scientific name ‘tuna’ or hereinafter referred to as ‘tuna’ for convenience) has been known to us since the beginning of Korea’s deep-sea fishery in 1957, and has become a popular fish species familiar to us as canned food and sashimi. There is no doubt that tuna, which was caught by deep-sea fishing boats in Korea’s most economically difficult situation after the war, contributed to economic development as a representative export item and earning foreign currency in name and reality in the 1960s and 1970s. It is an important fish species. However, the tuna longline fishery for sashimi, which was the main exporter of Korea, peaked at 589 vessels (1975) and 162,000 tons (1977), and was reduced to about 100 vessels, approximately 36,000 tons, as of the end of 2202, and once reached the Japanese market. Korea, which used to be the largest exporter of Korean food, has been pushed aside by Taiwan and China. The global tuna consumption market is largely divided into sashimi and ...