• Maritime Security
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.237-255
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• 2021

This article analyzed maritime territorial policies in Korea. Marine territory originally refers to the topography of the subsoil in a country's territorial sea. From a political perspective, it is a broad concept that includes islands and polar regions beyond the jurisdiction of Korean sovereignty or sovereign rights, such as territorial waters, EEZs, and continental shelves. Also, Korean researchers use "maritime territory" as a term for maritime zones that stretch from Ieodo (Korean EEZ) to Dokdo Island. The purpose of this study is to review the concepts of various domestic maritime territories and examine the formation and change of policies. The article is structured as follows. Chapter 2 reviews past discussions on maritime territories and analyzes the concept of maritime territory based on them. The term "maritime territory" is used indiscriminately with islands due to the lack of discussion on this matter between academic circles in the past. Therefore, this chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the concept of maritime territory. Chapter 3 tracks the formation and change of maritime territorial policies. Today, the concept of domestic maritime territory has been completed in the public domain. The activities of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, the control tower of domestic maritime territorial policies, are summarized to explain this concept. Chapter 4 analyzes the concept of maritime territory by comparing it with China's blue state territory (藍色國土). As China's concept of blue state territory has many similarities with maritime territory as a political base for China's maritime activities today, comparing these two concepts would be significant. Based on the above, Chapter 5 derives suggestions to promote maritime territorial policies.