무인선박의 선박성에 관한 해석적 고찰

Abstract

The unmanned ship is considered as a leading technology in the modern shipping industry in the future. Each country is trying to enhance the development of unmanned ship’s technology through regional and industrial cooperation. However, in order to commercialize the unmanned ship, it will not only provide an institutional strategy, but it will also examine anticipated legal issues of autonomous ships. In this regard, it is unable to globally operate the ship, unless it does observe a wide range of international maritime conventions in consideration of the global characteristics of the modern shipping industry. Generally, when it comes to the concept of ‘ship’, while it does not include essentially human element, it should be required the duty to provide human seaworthiness in the shipping industry. Namely, there are mandatory provisions to sustain the human seaworthiness as the regulatory tools in most international maritime treaties and conventions relating to the ship’s safety and the protection of the marine environment as well as human resource. Thus, the fundamental question as to whether the unmanned ship is considered as the ship would be raised. In particular, the judge as to whether the unmanned ship is regarded as the ship can be the first step to reveal the legal obstacles as a result of the commercialization of the unmanned ship. Therefore, this study is to scrutinize the ship’s definition based on international treaties and conventions, municipal laws of the major maritime states and literature reviews relevant to the consideration of the ship’s definition. In addition, this study contributes to solving the legal issues by revealing the ship’s nature of the unmanned ship in applying to international or domestic regulations.