Korea to end routine ship quarantine checks for crew changes to speed port entry

Quarantine officers will no longer board ships arriving in Korea simply because a crew change took place in a disease-risk area after revisions go into effect on Oct. 1 that are expected to speed port entry for about 10,000 vessels a year.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) promulgated amended enforcement rules under the Quarantine Act on Monday. The revision shifts ship quarantine to a risk-based system and brings Korea's ship sanitation procedures in line with World Health Organization (WHO) standards.

Under the new rules, officers will focus onboard inspections on ships with a higher risk of disease transmission. Those include vessels that have reported a patient or death from a quarantinable infectious disease, show evidence of disease vectors on board or lack a valid ship sanitation certificate.

Until now, officers had to board whenever a crew changed in a country or region designated because quarantinable infectious diseases are circulating or pose a risk of spreading. The requirement applied even when there was little risk of a high-fatality, fast-spreading disease such as Ebola.

The United States and Japan do not treat routine crew changes as grounds for boarding, instead conducting onboard inspections when infection cases, deaths or other risk factors are reported, the KDCA said. Korean shipping companies have complained that the inspections can delay vessel operations and cargo handling, while quarantine officers have raised safety concerns about boarding ships at sea.

Crew changes in quarantine management areas accounted for 57.6 percent of onboard inspections carried out at sea over a one-year period, the agency said. No suspected case of a quarantinable infectious disease was identified through those inspections.

From 2023 through 2025, the KDCA recorded 29,094 inspection cases involving crew changes in quarantine management areas, an average of about 10,000 a year.

Quarantine officers have sometimes had to climb rope ladders up the sides of ships in high waves and strong winds to conduct the inspections. The KDCA said reducing routine boardings should also lower the risk of accidents.

Ships covered by the change will still undergo electronic document screening. Officers can conduct an on-site health and sanitation check when submitted documents require verification or a vessel's condition raises questions.

The agency will also begin randomly selecting some arriving ships for onboard inspections late this year to prevent gaps as more quarantine checks shift to paperwork.

The fee for a ship sanitation certificate, unchanged for 16 years, will rise on Oct. 1 to between 60,000 won and 300,000 won ($40 to $220), from the current range of 20,000 won to 100,000 won.

The KDCA divided the fee scale into six gross-tonnage bands instead of five after consulting the shipping industry. It said Korean fees will remain below those in Japan, where they range from about 15,900 yen ($100) to 56,900 yen, and the United States, where they range from about $8,000 to $65,000.

The KDCA commissioner will also be able to specify documents that ships must submit for advance review, including drinking water analysis reports, starting Dec. 1. The agency said the provision is intended to standardize ship sanitation inspections.

"This amendment will help remove regulations that have persisted as a matter of routine and shift ship quarantine toward a risk-based system aligned with international standards," KDCA Commissioner Lim Seung-kwan said. "Starting at the end of this year, we will also introduce random-sample onboard inspections to strike a balance between border quarantine safety and faster ship entry."

BY JONG HOON-JUNG [[email protected]]