08/04/2025
On The Wire – Michael Field
Enslaved on the Pacific
Earlier this week a 36-year-old South Korean fishing boat hauled into Majuro with engine troubles. Coming into a port at all was an unusual experience for the tuna longliner D**g Won 620 and its 25 officers and crew; usually the 50 metre long, 470 ton stays at sea, like the near slave ship it is.
When it dropped anchor in Majuro’s lagoon it came at the end of 361 consecutive days at sea. Veteran fisheries consultant and ex-fisher himself, Francisco Blaha, writes on Linkedin of going aboard D**g Won to conduct inspections, and discovering that captain and crew had been at sea 361 days.
‘Just imagine what it means to be confined to a 50-metre fishing vessel for a year without getting to land,’ Blaha posted. ‘And it's not the captain’s decision… he also has been on board for a year (named elsewhere as Jaeng Kim). So it goes up to vessel owners… but critically to the flag state legislation that allows vessels to be at sea for undetermined times.’
He noted that time at sea without shore leave was not regulated in most places.
‘Days at sea that extend well beyond the norm for the vessel type and fishery can be a significant warning sign of forced labour. Yet 361 days is beyond the pale.’
Responding to comments on his post, Blaha said D**g Won had not unloaded its catch in Majuro but came in because of engine issues.
‘Crew had contracts, and we provided the passports to each of them to do immigration, boat and amenities are in good conditions… is just that high seas fishing and doing all bunkering and transshipment in high seas is their way… I just think that everyone on board should have shore leave at least every six months… but that ain’t legislated.’
Commenting on the post, Bubba Cook of the NGO Sharks Pacific said the transhipment used by the vessel, and other ships, ‘plays in facilitating or exacerbating human rights abuses, particularly on longline vessels kept out to sea for long periods like this one. On the human rights issue alone, vessels should be required to land in port subject to sufficient inspections, but there are four countries that will simply not allow that to happen, because they hold all the cards in this consensus process and they are unwilling to give up transhipment or be subject to meaningful protections for crew.’
Cook said at his last Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention (WCPFC) meeting in Suva he told the meeting ‘consensus process is broken and has resulted in fisheries management by the least common denominator subject to the tyranny of the minority’ and that it was time for members to start taking votes on these issues.
D**g Won 620, built in 1989 according to WCPFC registration, is part of a fleet owned by D**gwon Fisheries Ltd of Seoul.
Global Fishing Watch charts show that 620 does not fish in exclusive economic zones, and stays instead on the Pacific high seas, and high seas pockets. During its year at sea it was refuelled and its catch off-loaded onto fish carriers Oceanus and Seibu, out of Korea.
D**gwon Fisheries has extensive New Zealand connections and used to fish New Zealand’s EEZ with a fleet of infamous boats. Crews were usually from Indonesia and Cambodia and if they were paid, it was near slave wages. Despite connections with big New Zealand fishing companies like Sanfords, D**gwon and fellow nationals Sajo Oyang Ltd, used old and dangerous ships. Earlier New Zealand governments were indifferent to safety and wages, and it was only when vessels began sinking, with lives lost, that change came.
In my 2014 book The Catch: How fishing companies reinvented slavery and plunder the oceans, I related how D**gWon used strongarm tactics with agents in Indonesia to silence crews complaining about wages.
For the most part the Korean fishing companies have been driven out of New Zealand’s EEZ thanks to law changes, but they haven’t left the South Pacific at all.
MarineTraffic shows D**g Won 620 just north of Majuro, heading back to another year on the high seas.
On Francisco Blaha’s Linkedin another consultant, Tim Costelloe, commented: ‘When I worked on Korean Boats out of NZ, the terms of employment and the working conditions imposed by the company were diabolical, when compared to other operators, even for the Koreans.’
