한중일 심해저 광물자원개발 현황과 전망

Abstract

Since the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982, the world community has been setting up two paradigms about the ocean. First, for the exploitation of fuel and mineral resources, international community has silently declared unlimited competition for the future mineral resources in the ocean, which is sharply in conflict and inconsistent with issues of national territorial and sovereign rights. Second, the Convention initiated a new era on systematic contron under the new international regime. And the time was ripe for establishing a rule for the practical utilization of deep-sea resources, the heritage of mankind. With such paradigms as a basis, the development of deep-sea mineral resources is now recognized as a new realm of resources development, where the capital and technology can be concentrated on. Concerns on exhaustion of land-based mineral resources in the near future and the emergence of newly industrialized countries, BRICs, had a strong need for ocean exploitation as the last unknown frontier on the earth. Currently, the procurement of mineral resources is an important mission that each country should put its effort by concentrating all of available technical capabilities. Including China, Japan and Korea, three countries have been aggressively performing the exploration of deep-sea mineral resources as a national long-term strategy to secure the future metal supply. These research activity and investment will accelerate the commercial mining of deep-sea mineral resources.