Ship arrest

Ship arrest (선박가압류/船舶假押留) means the arrest of a certain ship to recover the claims of creditors enforceable at the venue of such arrest.

In addition to the local laws regarding ship arrest, at present, there are two following international conventions on the ship arrest:
 * the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules relating to the Arrest of Seagoing Ships, 1952 (the "Arrest Convention") approved at the diplomatic conference held in Brussels in May 1952.
 * the Arrest Convention adopted at the international conference on 12 March 1999.

The analysis of the substance of these two Arrest Conventions is necessary to prepare for the revision of the Civil Execution Act (민사집행법) on the ship arrest provisions.

Key words
ship arrest, release of ship, Arrest Conventions, maritime claims (해사채권/海事債權), attachment

Arrest Conventions
The 1952 Arrest Convention came into force at the 1956. At present, 84 States have adopted the Convention including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, etc. This Convention have a status as the international uniform rules of the ship arrest.

The 1999 Arrest Convention entered into force at the 2011 and 10 States have adopted the Convention.

Maritime Claims
The view of the civil law countries is that ship arrest should be permissible in respect of any claims, but the view of the common law countries is that ship arrest should be permitted only in respect of specific claims of a maritime nature. The principle that arrest should be permitted only in respect of claims of a maritime nature had been adopted in the Arrest Convention as a result of the compromise between civil law system and common law system. So The 1952 Arrest Convention listed 17 kinds of maritime claims at the article 1 of the Convention and the 1999 Arrest Convention listed 21 kinds of maritime claims.

There are three enforcement aspects of maritime claims:
 * 1) the extent to which a remedy may be obtained by a maritime claimant so as to ensure that there will be assets available to turn a judgement into material gain (the interim or provisional remedy aspect);
 * 2) the rules governing the bring of an action to enforce a maritime claim (the jurisdiction aspect);
 * 3) the extent to which a maritime claimant becomes a preferred creditor (the security aspect).

In many legal systems based on codes this logical order is borne out in legislation. Rules of provisional remedy will be found in the Civil Procedure Act, unless there are particular maritime rules which may then be included in the Maritime Code.

Jurisdiction
Rules relating to jurisdiction on the merits will probably be found similarly in procedure codes but distinguished from rules relating to provisional remedy. Rules relevant to preferred creditors will be in the Maritime Code, in so far as these are maritime rules and in the Civil Code in so far as they are generally applicable.

Both Arrest Conventions includes several other legal aspects on ship arrest per example, power of arrest, exercise of right of arrest, Release from arrest, Right of rearrest and multiple arrest, Protection of owners and demise charterers of arrested ships,

Jurisdiction on the merits of the case, Application, etc. Korea civil enforcement law permitted to any claims for the ship arrest. So this paper analysed the contents of the 1952 Arrest Convention and 1999 Arrest Convention for the preparation of the revision of the Ship Arrest provisions.